Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/310

 NEW BOOKS. 297 the Life (1) a list of " the existing works of Bruno" with enumeration of editions and short description of the contents (pp. 310-339), (2) a notice of the Noroff collection of unpublished MSS. (pp. 343-369), (3) a list of " the lost works of Bruno" (pp. 373-377), (4) an "alphabetical list of authorities" (compiled by Mr. Wm. Heinemaun), from which hardly any book or article dealing with Bruno can have been omitted (pp. 379-388), (5) the letter of Scioppius (pp. 389-395). The volume is inscribed " to the memory of Nicholas Triibner, the faithful friend and kind adviser who proposed the subject of this book, whose interest in it continued unfailing to the last hours of his life, and without whose aid these pages could never have been written ". Life of Antonio Rosmini Serbati, Founder of the Institute of Charity. Edited by WJLLIAM LOCKHART, Procurator of the Order in Eome, &'c. 2 vols. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886. Pp. xxxiii., 360 ; xi., 352. It is necessary to return, however briefly, to this book, which was little more than mentioned in the last No. of TvIiND, p. 135. It gives not only, in simple and straightforward style, all the information that could be desired about the life and character of the saintly man, but includes in the few chapters devoted to the thinker a translation of two pieces from Eos- mini's own hand (ii. 242-72) that have but recently seen the light in the Italian original. In these he first sketches the history of modern philo- sophy from Locke, defining his own position and especially his relation to Eeid and Kant, and then gives under nine heads a short and precise sum- mary of his philosophic system. With the succeeding chapter, showing the harmony between Eosmini and St. Thomas in an essay (pp. 275-303) borrowed from the late Bishop Ferre of Casale in Piedmont, the reader has thus a convenient means of judging of the general import of a system of thought more than ordinarily voluminous in its elaborated form. It may remain doubtful whether the countrymen of Eeid have much to learn, except in point of curious erudition, from the volumes which the piety of Eosmini's English translators has been making accessible to them, but after this Life there can be no question of the supreme interest attaching to him as a man of spiritual gifts. Mr. Cotter Morison has been saying that the saint, like the genius, is born so. Eosmini was a born saint, as every line of his biography tells. It tells also, what few can have known, how, or at least how much, the widespread Eoman Catholic missionary movement in this country during the last half century had its spring in the charitable faith of the secluded Italian thinker. The Service of Man. An Essay towards the Eeligion of the Future. By JAMES COTTER MORISON. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1887. Pp. xxxi., 318. The greater part of this most readable book where an historical estimate (mainly unfavourable) is made of the influence and work of Christianity in the world lies out of the province of MIND, but incident- ally, and more especially in a final chapter " On the Cultivation of Human Nature," there is a strain of philosophical observation claiming recognition. The moralising effects of Determinism are set forth with peculiar force. A very gloomy Preface (pp. xxx.), bringing into sharp and exclusive relief certain elements of imminent danger in the social condition of the more advanced nations, has much in it that should be laid to heart by all serious-minded people at the present time, but reads rather curiously by the side of the generally optimistic pages of the body of the book.