Her sketches are the agreeable jottings of a highly cultivated woman; seeing nature in the light of poetry rather than science, she has made a series of charming pictures out of her wanderings. They are not free from sentiment,—illusions if you will, but that is their greatest charm. “The world of reality is a poor affair.” So many books of travel are annually appearing,—books that have no excuse for being other than to prove how widespread dulness and incapacity is, that a trip with a guide like Mrs. Blake has but one failing,—its shortness. Neither in her travels nor in her literary articles does Mrs. Blake body forth her best prose utterance. These must be found in her earnest social papers, where her woman’s heart, saddened by the miseries of its fellows, pours out its streams of consolation and preaches (all earnest souls must be preachers now-a-days) the only and all sufficient cure—the Church. An extract from one of these papers will best show her power. She is portraying the Church manifesting itself in the individual as well as the family life, pleading for the central idea of her system. “Jesus Christ is the complement of man,”—the restorer of the race. The Catholic Church is the manifestation of Jesus Christ. “There are, alas! too many weaknesses into which thoughtlessness and opportunity lead one class as well as the other. But still there is to be seen almost without exception, among practical Catholics, young wives, content and happy, welcoming from the very outset of married life the blessed company of the little ones who are to guard them as do their angels in heaven; proud like Cornelia of their jewels; gladly accepting comparative poverty and endless care; while their sisters outside the Church buy the right to idleness and personal adorning at the expense of the childless homes which are a disgrace and menace to the nation. There is the honor and purity of the fireside respected; the overpowering sweetness and strength of family ties acknowledged; the reverential love that awaits upon the father and mother shown. There are sensitive and refined women bearing sorrow with resignation and hardship without rebellion; combating pain with patience and fulfilling harsh duty without complaint. In a tremendous over-proportion to those who attempt to live outside its helpfulness, and in exact ratio to their practical devotion to the observances of the Church, they find power of resisting temptation in spite of poverty, and overcoming impulse by principle. Can the world afford to ignore an agency by which so much is accomplished?