tion of various kinds of differential equations. P. Peeters, S.J., summarizes and discusses the views of M. Couturat on an international language.

La Quinzaine (April 16): Mlle. Faure begins a series of studies in Dante. M. de Marolles gives an account of the antiduelling league recently formed in France, and which now numbers in that country eighteen hundred members; he takes occasion from his subject to make an historical survey of duelling and of the church's attitude in regard to it. The 14th of April of the present year was the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Genius of Christianity; so M. Victor Giraud writes an enthusiastic eulogium of the work, as a jubilee offering to the great mind and happy influences of Châteaubriand. (May 1): M. Baumann declares that the plans for social progress advocated by Auguste Comte are possible of fulfilment only with the help of the Catholic Church. P. Griselle gives another instalment of reasons for re-editing the works of Bourdaloue.

L'Ami du Clergé (27 March): Cautions against the reorganization of clerical studies on too naturalistic lines. Declares that unduly to exalt episcopal power by saying its only bound is the bishop's own pleasure, is to endanger this power and to provoke a reaction.

La Justice Sociale (22-29 March): M. D. sketches the changes that have been introduced, and the works that have been published, during the last five years, in the matter of clerical studies.

(5 April): P. Naudet scores pseudo-pious literature and foolish devotional practices.

(12 April): P. Naudet intimates that priests give too little thought to the Christianization of society and of social institutions.

L'Univers (14 April): P. Gayraud praises P. Hogan's Clerical Studies as an example of "orthodox progressiveness and recommends it to seminary professors.

Science Catholique (April): M. le Marquis de Nadaillac considers the question of the unity of the human species, as affected by recent discoveries of the neolithic age. P. Laveille contributes a description of De Lamennais and his friends.

between the Jansenists and the Calvinists, whom he calls "cousins-german."

Rassegna Nazionale (16 April): A. Brunialti describes the Touring Club of Italian cyclists with its 27,000 members. Commenting on the Civiltà's recent article upon relics, etc. (which described certain limits of the, sphere of infallibility), X. X. says that had the Civiltà used the same sort of language when Rosmini was condemned, a great deal of harm would have been avoided. P. Ghignoni defends the study of the classical languages as necessary to a real appreciation of classical literature. R. Corniari describes the impression made by M. Brunetière's discourse on Religious Progress delivered at Florence. Civiltà Cattolica (19 April): Shows the evils to which the rage for divorce leads. Insists on the necessity of educating clerics along lines different from those pursued in the education of the laity.

(3 May): Comments on the close connection between anti-clericalism and atheism. Gives great praise to Barden-Lewer's new Patrology, and shows his various differences with Harnack. Publishes the letter of the American hierarchy to Pope Leo XIII. and the Holy Father's reply (to be found in our present issue).

Studi Religiosi (March-April): P. Minocchi treats of the ques

tion of divorce in the Bible. P. Palmieri describes the general characteristics of the science of theology in the Byzantine Church. L. Grammatica describes Roman road-making in Palestine after the destruction of Jerusalem. Continues the publication of the Leggenda Antica of St. Francis of Assisi discovered by Sig. Minocchi. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (21 April): P. Wasmann writes on the phenomena and the laws of cell-division. P. Kugler describes the state of science in ancient Egypt. mayr concludes his sketch of Plato's ideal of virtue as represented in the Apology of Socrates. P. Hilgers concludes his description of the Sistine Chapel.

P. Stigl

Razón y Fe (May): P. Fita impugns the scholarship of l'Abbé Duchesne for statements made in his denial of St. James's visit to Spain. P. Ocaña discusses the alleged legal power of the Crown to interfere with religious orders. P. Minteguiaga, from the view-point of law and morality,

R

THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.

EADERS are often bewildered by the claims of certain books as presented by the publishers. The following advertisement appeared in several New York dailies, with display type, on May 1:

Edith Wharton's distinguished novel, The Valley of Decision (third edition).

Hamilton W. Mabie: "Rare and fine and full of distinction."

Margaret E. Sangster: "Lures from vista to vista with surpassing fasci

nation."

Agnes Repplier: "A genuine tour de force."

Jeannette L. Gilder: "Will give its author a high place among her fellow-craftsmen."

"Will undoubtedly become a classic."-New York Sun.

"The most splendid achievement of any American man or woman in fiction."-Louisville Courier-Journal.

"Stands out giant-like among its surroundings."—Boston Evening Tran

script.

In two volumes, $2.00. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

Regarding this book, which seems to be so highly praised by the phrases quoted from well-known writers, including Agnes Repplier, a critical friend of The Columbian Reading Union writes as follows:

The Valley of Decision is the subtlest assault ever invented in English literature against the Catholic Church. The author had no intention of hurting higher education of women if conducted under pagan or anti-Catholic auspices. Her aim is to hurt the convents and the church. The book is of so squalid a nature that no refined woman would be willing to associate her name even with condemnation of it.

It will be remembered that the same Edith Wharton wrote an offensive poem on a Catholic saint, which was followed by an apology from the editor of the magazine in which it appeared.

Evidently the Chicago Chronicle has penetrated the mist surrounding the valley that haunted the imagination of Miss Wharton, until she put it in book form to obscure the vision of many readers. On the editorial page of the Chronicle, April 20, 1902, appeared the most satisfactory criticism that we have seen of this higher-education novel, which we gladly reproduce for the interests of historical truth:

The severest blow dealt against the higher education of women has been delivered by one of themselves, the author of The Valley of Decision, a somewhat tedious two-volume novel of the spurious "historical" variety.

It has been claimed by the opponents of equal education for men and women that whatever the intellectual results of the attempt, the moral result would be injurious to the family and society. It has been specifically urged that the tendency of the higher education would be to draw women more and more toward the laxer social standards of men, and to make women impatient of those restraints which until now have constituted the bulwarks of the home.

The Valley of Decision supports this theory. The heroine around whom the sympathy of the story is concentrated enjoys from early youth the advantages which other women, at least in the United States, must acquire, if at all, by long years of labor through primary and secondary schools into colleges and universities. A name of evil omen, whether in Roman history or in Ben Jonson's "Catiline," Fulvia starts the heroine out on a path of aspiration, inde

Her learning fails to develop moral or spiritual growth. In full womanhood, having had abundant experience enabling her to see the evils of society in the fullest glare of their malignity, Fulvia voluntarily accepts an unlawful and immoral social status from which all right-minded women instinctively recoil. She becomes the willing victim of a profligate weakling on a petty ducal throne, and feels neither shame nor remorse in her degradation.

The malign influence of such a novel upon the aspirations of American women for university privileges is made by the author the more certain and the more emphatic because the scene of the sinister fiction is laid in the country which was the first to open university doors to women. The poet Alfieri is dragged into the story to heighten the proportions of its all-pervading moral squalor. Sneering at the idea of a woman taking the degree of doctor of philosophy, the poet is made to say: "Oh, she's one of your prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces; an incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father's good sense or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honors. The beautiful Fulvia is a good daughter and devotes herself, I am told, to helping Vivaldi in his work, a far more becoming employment for one of her age and sex than defending Latin theses before a crew of ribald students."

But Fulvia's father was a sympathizer with his daughter's tastes, which he habitually promoted. To make the lesson of the moral failure of the higher education of women still more convincing, the author of The Valley of Decision reserves the bestowal of her final degree upon Fulvia until after the university and the whole town are familiar with her adoption of a shameless life and her open rejection of religious or conventional standards.

In Italy the universities were open to women soon after their foundation in the Middle Ages. At Bologna, which for centuries was one of the greatest universities in Europe, a number of women justly attained distinction as professors of the sciences, languages, and law. Laura Bassi was of a comparatively late time. So great was her reputation for learning, but also for virtue, that her doctorate was conferred under circumstances of civic and academic pomp. She married happily and became the mother of fourteen children.

Two sisters Agnesi were distinguished in Italian higher education. One, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, was an eminent professor and author in the exact sciences during the eighteenth century, and lived to be upward of eighty years of age. A younger sister was distinguished as a pianist and composer. Upon the entire array of the learned women of Italy whose careers have been historically noted there was never a breath of moral reproach.

The injury which The Valley of Decision inflicts upon the contemporary higher education of women is shrewdly designed in the contrast which this repulsive novel makes in its alienation of the higher education from religious and moral control.

The atmosphere which is created for the reader of The Valley of Decision is the most repulsive ever introduced into an American literary production. In the large company constituting the chief participants in a story projected along hackneyed guide-book information there is not from the first cover of the first volume to the last of the second one honest man or virtuous woman.

The moral squalor of the Valley of Decision is the more surprising because the scene is laid in the land which has given to literature and life the paramount group of ideal womanhood, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, Michael Angelo's Vittoria Colonna; and to Shakspere his two most engaging characters, blending in their mutual devotion of a noble womanhood erudition and chastity, Portia and Nerissa.

The womanhood of the United States may justly deplore that such a volume as The Valley of Decision should have its origin in the United States, in which the experiment of the higher education of women has thus far been courageously carried to an advancement which few of the universities have

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