We have been asked to notice this book. But how are Catholics to regard it with favor, when, before they have read far in the poem of “The Red Flag,” they come upon a passage containing an insult too gross and slanderous, we should have thought, for even Exeter Hall? We forbear to quote the words. Suffice it to say that the author, ignoring the martyred archbishop and priests, represents the church as gloating over the execution of the communists in Paris. Affectation, verboseness, and sensuous description characterize these poems as works of art; while the metre of “The Red Flag” is in the worst taste, and the lyrics are spoilt by all sorts of quirks and the clumsiest divisions of stanzas. The Catholic Publication Society has in press, and will soon publish, _The Life of St. John of the Cross_, 1 vol. 12mo, and _The Farm of Muiceron and Madame Agnes_, in 1 vol. 8vo. THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 110.—MAY, 1874. The Coming Transit Of Venus. This year, 1874, bids fair to be memorable in the annals of astronomy. A subject which has long occupied our students of that venerable and now gigantic science is gradually passing from their closets and their scientific discussions into reviews and newspapers, and is forcing itself on the attention of the world at large. At first sight the matter seems a very trivial one. On the 8th of next December, keen eyes in certain parts of the world may, if the sky be clear, and if they look closely, notice that a small, dark spot, a mere speck, will flit across the face of the sun. Examined through a telescope, it is seen to have an appreciable diameter—about 1’. It is not half as interesting to look at as ordinary solar spots, with their jagged edges, their umbra and penumbra, their changing forms, and their whirling faculæ. It has not, as they seem to have, some vague connection with the magnetic disturbances, the auroral lights, or any other atmospheric changes of this sublunary world of ours. It simply passes across the sun in something less than six hours, leaving no trace behind, and producing, so far as would appear, no appreciable effect of any kind. It occurs but rarely—twice in a century; in some centuries, not at all. Small as it is, it can be foretold and calculated beforehand. Except as a verification of such calculations, ordinary minds might think it singularly unimportant—scarcely more important than the gleam in the heavens at night of an occasional and isolated falling star, which glides along its shining path for an instant, and then disappears never more to be seen.