Dublin Review Volume 47; A Quarterly and Critical Journal (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 Excerpt: ...to the English reader. To him no ground so new as the ground our author has gone over. No picture to him so strange as the vivid picture here presented of Catholic charity in its various institutions and communities, now struggling in noiseless obscurity with every form of distress, moral and physical, now going out into the street to meet vice, and win with its persuasive voice the reluctant sinner, and now grappling with crime in its death-struggle, and gaining so often the hard-earned triumph of a death-bed repentance. The genius of organization distinguishes in an eminent degree the French character. It was singularly displayed at the outbreak of the Crimean war. And we may now observe, if we choose, the same spirit regulating and giving force to the charitable institutions and to the religious confraternities of Paris. But real charity does not blow its own trumpet. If we wish to discover her divine aspect we must seek after her with something of the avidity we are wont to bestow or squander in Paris, on the pursuit of pleasure, in London, on the search after gold. What know we, indeed, of Paris? Do we know much more than what from time to time we have gleaned from the novel, from " our own correspondent," or from the hasty and superficial traveller? The idea we have of Paris is a conventional idea. The English public is startled and Bhakes its grave head when it hears for the first time, as in these volumes, of a religious life in Paris. Impossible, it exclaims, Paris is the theatre of Europe, and nothing more. Men go thither for amusement. It is the gay city where the world seeks dissipation after its labours. To keep up this fashionable notion our light and elegant writers deal in stock-phrases, and speak in cant terms of the frivolous cit...