great
founders and lawgivers. For the past three hundred years she has firmly
adhered to the principle of celibacy, and assuredly with incontestable
wisdom. With the universal elevation of the moral tone throughout
Europe, she has been less frequently mortified by having to look with
indulgence upon the licentious manners of her priests.

It seems to us that this rapid survey of the immense subject treated by
Mr. Lea is calculated to confirm rather than to enfeeble an unprejudiced
reader's sense of the marvellous achievements of the Church. The
enumeration, made in the volume before us, of its enactments with regard
to celibacy and chastity, constitutes a chapter in its internal history.
This is, to our perception, the worst that can be said of them and of
the state of things which they reveal. If the Catholic Church is to be
pronounced an institution of the past, a mockery, a delusion, and a
snare, it is not on these grounds alone, or on any exclusive grounds,
but from a broadly comprehensive point of view. Every human institution
has a private history which is very different from its public one. In
some respects the former is the more, in others the less, admirable of
the two. In the present case, the element in the picture which appeals
to our admiration is the heroic patience and perseverance, the
fortitude, the tact, and the courage with which the Church applied
herself to the healing of her internal wounds when they were curable,
and to the enduring of them when they were not, in order that, at any
cost, she might produce upon the world the impression of unity, sanity,
and strength.

_Ten Months in Brazil; with Incidents of Voyages and
Travels, Descriptions of Scenery and Character, Notices of
Commerce and Productions, etc._ By JOHN CODMAN. Boston: Lee
and Shepard.

The title of this book leaves its reviewer little to say in explanation
of its purposes. It is a lively enough book, and a book well enough
written, with a good deal of dash and piquancy in the style; and yet,
like the blameless dinner to which Doctor Johnson objected that it was
not a dinner to ask a man to, it is not a book to advise one to read. It
does not appear to us, after reading it, that we are wiser concerning
Brazil than before; even the facts in it we greeted, in many cases, with
the warmth due to old statistical acquaintances. The philosophy of the
author seems to be that the Brazilians are a bad set, and that the