The whole subject of this volume belongs to ecclesiastical history, and it is a strange one--how difficult to read to our actual knowledge, and to receive with candour. How much is there to condemn, to abhor--how much to admire, to love, to venerate. Sincerity, zeal, piety, and charity ought always to claim our sympathies, when our understandings reject a creed. If rising from contemplative communion with the saints and martyrs of the Romish calendar, with such mixed feelings, yet in which, we confess, a loving admiration preponderates, let us not come under a suspicion, so common in these days, of "tendencies to Rome." We have not the shadow of a thought that way--we utterly abominate and abhor Popery as a system, its frauds, its idolatry, or idolatries--for they are many--and the bondage which it would impose upon the necks of all people. But forbid it, charity--Christian charity above all--that we should join in a bestial persecution, and sit, as we were gods, and as some do, in severe judgment on, and denounce as children of perdition, and as doomed, all simple and innocent, virtuous and pious, members of that Church. To do this would, we conceive, be the part of a bad Protestant, for it is not the part of a Christian. But to return. It is remarkable of the Jesuits that they have no female saint. Yet, if there be truth in history, they have dealt cunningly and widely in female agencies. We have too hastily passed by the Carmelites, and without noticing that extraordinary woman St Theresa--at a very early age a candidate for martyrdom--who with her brother, when they were children of eight and nine years of age, went begging into the country of the Moors, in hopes of being martyred for their faith at the hands of the infidels. At her death she had founded fifteen convents for men, and seventeen for women. We refer to the volume of Mrs Jameson for a larger notice of this saintly and sainted woman. We merely mention her slightly ourselves, that we may pass to her eulogy from the pens of two eloquent writers of her own sex--Mrs Jameson and Miss Martineau. "It is impossible," says the former, "to consider, in a just and philosophic spirit, either her character or her history, without feeling that what was strong, and beautiful, and true, and earnest, and holy, was in herself, and what was morbid, miserable, and mistaken, was the result of the influences around her." Oh, how does this eloquent apology cover with the mantle of charity, and embrace with the arms of love, many more personages than poor St Theresa, whose effigies may be seen in this volume. We must not forget, before we lay down the pen, that not only the religious orders, but art also is a main object of this work.