I have no intention of refuting this palpably absurd rendering of the Catholic outlook, nor is there much necessity, for, fortunately, true history is coming into her own. In Germany she has made her first conquests; and here, thinking of men like Janssen, and Pastor, and Emil Michael, and praying to see go forth one day from the Lecture Halls of our Irish Universities, reapers to follow them into the fields that stand ready for the sickle; I cannot but rejoice at the bright prospects of a great Irish publishing house, which shall do for Irish savants, what Herder did for those of Germany. As long as historians like Symonds interpreted the Renaissance for us, it was inevitable that we should be shown only a small part of it—just as much as would fit comfortably into the Michelet formula. Moreover, Symonds and his fellows really did not know Catholicism when they saw it. Between involuntary ignorance, and deliberate “suppressiones veri,” they have managed to give us a very untruthful picture of the Renaissance. It is with something like a gasp of wonder we turn to the complete picture presented by Dr. Pastor. Here, side by side with belated Pagans, like the “Panormita,” and Lorenzo Valla, we see true Christian Savants like Gianozzo Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and our own Vittorino; side by side with monsters like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta we have Christian rulers like the good Duke Frederick of Urbino; side by side with social butterflies like poor Beatrice of Este, we have devoted mothers of families like Madonna Paola; side by side with the celebrated sinners, we have the canonized saints, a long, long list of them. I believe, indeed, that, at no period of their history, have the two great Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic shown themselves so fruitful in Saints, as that across which Symonds would fain have us see written the “I follow the finite” of Cosimo de’ Medici. As a result of this treatment of the period, many of its most characteristic works have been hidden away from us. So it has come to pass that, while most students of Italian Literature know a great deal about a book like “Il Trattato del Governo della Famiglia,” if only because the question of its authorship has been so hotly debated, even those who hold for the paternity of Leo Battista Alberti, as against Pandolfini, may very well be unaware of the existence of the “Regola del Governo di Cura Famigliare,” dedicated to Leo Battista’s kinswoman, Bartolommea. If anything were wanting to prove how much alike is Catholicism in all ages and nations, one would only have to put this little book, written five hundred years ago, for a Florentine lady, into the hands of an Irish Catholic mother of to-day, and see how much of it she can use for herself. Practically all of it, we should find.