both with good, correct drawing, but much fitter for actual nursery wear. I am glad the last of the two has so many of the real old original rhymes, including your poor old woman, Arachne.

A. But what will you say to these beauties—Mrs. Ewing's verses, as put forth by the S. P. C. K.-all for no more than a shilling a-piece.

S. Oh! oh! the splendid poodle! The dear little squirrels! They are not such minute work as the Harlequin eggs, but I don't know if they are not more artistic. Give me all their names?

A. Papa Poodle, Doll's Housekeeping, Soldiers' Children, Bluebells on the Lea, Tongues in Trees, Little Boys' Wooden Horses, also Daddy Darwin's Dovecot. It is hard to tell which one likes best. The Soldiers' Children are the most touching, perhaps; Bluebells on the Lea the most airy and graceful.

S. And then there's the larger one, the foolish lobster's history, Blue and Red, and the beautiful little story of Jackanapes, all Mrs. Ewing's.

A. Together with Lætus Sorte Meâ, which I admire still more.. You should add to these her tales, which Bell still publishes, Jan, or the Miller's Thumb, and A Flat Iron for a Farthing.

S. What books are there for the creatures who can read to them selves?

A. There is a charming book of R. T. S. called Storyland with good pictures and nice stories, and another of Miss Meade's, published by Hodder, The Autocrat of the Nursery. It is a perfectly delightful story, the children are almost as fascinatingly naughty as if they were in Holiday House; but Miss Meade has made it foolishly difficult for the little ones to read, by trying to write down baby pronunciation all through, and what is a serious defect, extending her miss-spellings to the most sacred of names. I shall have to alter it into the right spelling before I give the book away. I would not on any account let the little ones see liberties taken with that Name.

S. What do you think of Miss Francis's Slyboots? It is very funny. A. Very funny and good, but the satire is beyond little children, except the first chapter, which is nearly Chaucer's Chanticlere falling a sacrifice to his vanity. I think boys are better provided for than little girls this winter, though, to be sure, a girl will read a boy's book and a boy disdains a girl's. There is The Doctor's Experiment (R. T. S.) a very good school-boy story.

S. Oh! I saw the outside, with a prostrate man upon it, and I thought it was going to be a physician's attempt to bring him to life. A. By no means. The experiment is on a very ungainly and unmanageable boy.

S. And this tricoloured book? The French Prisoners (Macmillan.) A. An interesting description of intercourse between some prisoners in the Franco-German War, and an honest, hearty pair of German ᏢᎪᎡᎢ 48.

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school-boys. It is said to be true. But I think boys will care more for Charlie Asgarde, who begins like Robinson Crusoe doubled, and then falls in with the Fijians before they were converted and civilised, and were quite savage enough to satisfy any boy's appetite for horrors. There is the Hunting of the Albatross, too (S. P. C. K), where there is a tremendous fight with a treacherous set of Lascars and Coolies.

S. Oh! that's grand for the boys! But are there no nice little girl's stories?

A. Here are two, not quite so new as these, but which I don't think you have seen, Miss Peard's Ashenden School-room, and Miss Weber's The Old House in the Square, both published by Routledge, and excellent in their way, both, curiously enough, turning on the exclusiveness and inhospitality of a large happy family towards a stranger, only in one case it is a cousin who suffers, in the other it is a medical pupil. There is also Bride Picotée.

S. Oh! it should be pronounced French fashion, should it? I thought Bride was the short for Bridget.

A. No, it is a kind of lace, and this is a charming story on the making of it according to a long lost secret.

S. Now for the Lending Library ones.

A. Miss Shipton's are by far the best. Bearing the Yoke and The Cottage Next Door are both of them thoroughly true to the nature of the people she represents. The Memborough Choir-boys is a good story for cathedral choristers of a higher class than village lads; and Louie White's Hop Picking (Griffith & Farran) is one of the few tales fit for school children of this winter.

S. Here is Miss Wilbraham's What is Right Comes Right; but that is fittest for a town library, especially for a G. F. S. one, being chiefly about shop girls. Poor little Patty, it is a charming bit about her!

A. Guide, Philosopher and Friend (Griffith and Farran) is an exceedingly nice book. It is about an excellent small farmer and his family, who find themselves suddenly wealthy, and are helped through the embarrassments of their position by a very sweet young girl, a real lady, whom they are wise enough to take as their companion. They are thoroughly natural, and quite free from vulgarity. Next to that, among the tales of this season, I like Anna Temple's Griffenhoof (S. P. C. K.).

S. What a name!

A. It belongs to an old battered sailor, whose adventures with a little girl rescued from a horrible old woman are exceedingly interesting, and so are the admiral's daughters, with whom he is brought in contact. I admire especially the way of dealing with a young girl who falters in her engagement with a man who is too good for her. A Dresden Romance is likewise very nice pleasant reading, being about a young man who gives up hopes of the higher works of art to support his family, and becomes a painter of porcelain at Meissen.

S. Are there any historical stories? They are the hardest to find good.

A. A Turbulent Town (S. P. C. K.) is an attempt to make an interesting story of Ghent and Philip von Artevelde, and is fairly good. So is Wind and Wave fulfilling His Word (R. T. S.), in which we have the Siege of Leyden.

S. That old siege! Everybody tries their hand on it.

A. And nobody should. Motley's narrative ought to be left to itself. The other story, A Prisoner's Daughter, by Esmé Stuart, is of the French prisoners at Winchester in 1758, and is on the whole good, though there are some improbabilities in it.

S. And tell me of a good novel or two.

A. By all means read Lady Margaret Majendie's Out of their Element. The impetuous Italian girl, who will not resign herself to English life, is the heroine, but not the prime interest or the finest character. The good, generous, simple, English May stands the highest, and there is a delightful little tomboy of a Jaqueline who is capital fun. There, we have gone through the whole scale of fiction, and I will only mention one graver book, Miss Wilbraham's, In the Sere and Yellow Leaf (Macmillan), which, though full of deep, quiet thought, has plenty of anecdote to beguile the way.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION.

A COLLOQUY BETWEEN SAINT AMBROSE AND SAINT AUGUSTINE, BY LUIS OF

GRANADA (c. 1550), TRANSLATED BY HENRY LASCELLES JENNER, D.D.,
SOMETIME BISHOP OF DUNEDIN, N. Z.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION.

"Confitemini Domino, et invocate nomen Ejus; notas facite in populis adinventiones Ejus ; mementote quoniam excelsum est nomen Ejus. Cantate Domino, quoniam magnificè fecit; annuntiate hoc in universâ terrâ."-(VULGATE.)

"Praise the Lord, call upon His name, declare His doings among the people; make mention that His name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord, for He hath done excellent things; this is known to all the earth."-(A. V.)—Isa. xii. 4, 5.

1.

PROLOGUE.

WE read that the celebrated Roman philosopher, Seneca, after long contemplation of the wonders of the material world-the grandeur of the heavens, the brilliancy of the stars, the courses of the planets, the orderly succession of the seasons, in a word, all the visible things of the universe, was fain to exclaim that this life was too transitory to allow of the attainment of a knowledge of these enduring things -to wit, the marvellous works which the Author of Nature had where displayed before the eyes of man.

every

It may be for a like reason that God seems to invite us by the mouth of His prophet in a manner to pass over His other works, in order the better to apply our minds to the contemplation of that one, which, by reason of its transcendent brightness, eclipses all the rest; that is to say, the mystery of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. So great, indeed, and so full of marvels is this mystery, that the entire lives of all who have ever lived would not suffice to fathom it. And yet it may be said with truth that there is no way in which we could better employ the few days that we yet have to live than in meditating on this mystery.

Let us, then, try to consider it under its different forms, and in its different points of view.

When a physician prescribes a particular beverage to a patient, he often advises that it should be taken, not only at meal times, but also whenever an inclination to drink is felt. I give the same counsel with respect to the Incarnation and Passion of our Lord. As the contemplation of this mystery is the most certain remedy for the

diseases of our souls, we ought to avail ourselves of every occasion of recalling it to our minds. In point of fact, our spiritual life may be said to depend on the faithfulness with which we apply ourselves to this holy exercise. Hence it will be useful to discuss this most momentous subject at some length; to present it in different aspects, and to explain it by citing passages of Holy Scripture in which it is referred to. By this method it will be no difficult matter for each of us to keep the subject constantly before his eyes, and that is the principal object which I have in view.

In treating of this mystery, that is to say, the mystery of the Only Begotten Son of God taking upon Him our flesh, that He might save the world, we must not lose sight of the truth, that the Lord had at His disposal a thousand different ways of accomplishing that object; but, being Himself absolute perfection, He chose that method which was the most perfect, the method in which were most perfectly fulfilled the conditions on which all His works are based, namely, mercy, justice, the glory of God, and the general good of mankind.

I adopt the form of a colloquy, and I suppose it to be carried on between S. Ambrose and S. Augustine, because, as history tells us, it was by the teaching of S. Ambrose that S. Augustine was drawn away from the heresy of the Manicheans; who, as all are aware, while admitting that God had created the things above, and those which are out of our sight, taught, nevertheless, that the maker of all that we see here below was the Devil. Augustine, when he renounced this error, was still completely ignorant of the great mysteries of our holy religion, especially of the ineffable Mystery of the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God. Quid autem sacramenti haberet "Verbum caro factum est nec suspicari quidem poterat,' says his biographer: that is, 'He had no kind of suspicion of what there was mysterious in the words "The Word was made Flesh." This is why I determined to bring S. Ambrose on the scene, and to represent him as explaining this mystery to Augustine, as he had already explained other things. And, indeed, if we may believe S. Augustine himself, the instructions of this holy Bishop were so profitable to him, that from the day of his baptism, he never wearied of contemplating with the utmost delight the wisdom of the Almighty, as shown in the means by which He had chosen to redeem mankind: in other words, nothing was to him conceivable, more excellent, more merciful, more fitting for the healing of our ills, than the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God.

II.

SUBJECT OF THE PRESENT COLLOQUY.

S. AMBROSE undertakes to demonstrate to S. Augustine the infinite superiority of the method employed by the Divine Wisdom to save the world over anything that could have been devised by human