in which, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the presence of the sun in the sign Taurus should coincide with the season of ploughing. All these calculations were equally fanciful with those founded on the famous zodiac of Denderah, and it is now ascertained beyond all reasonable doubt that the zodiacal signs have a religious or rather mythological, and not an agricultural, origin. —The above is in great part translated from an article by M. Gregoire in the _Revue des Questions Historiques_, for April, 1874. New Publications. LIFE OF ANNE CATHARINE EMMERICH. By Helen Ram. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) Many of our readers must have read that part of the record of Catharine Emmerich’s visions by Clement Brentano which has been translated into English. Those who have been pleased and edified by them will be delighted with this life of the holy and highly favored ecstatic virgin. It is a charming and wonderful life, especially that portion which relates the history of Anne Catharine’s miraculous infancy and childhood. The volume makes one of F. Coleridge’s series, which we have frequently had occasion to praise. We have been surprised to see in the pages of a book issued under the supervision of so accurate and careful an editor a number of inaccuracies in style and typographical errors. BRIC‐A‐BRAC SERIES—NO. 2: ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHIES OF THACKERAY AND DICKENS. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874. These recollections and anecdotes of the two favorite English writers of fiction are very readable, and those which relate to Thackeray especially interesting. THE YOUNG CATHOLIC’S ILLUSTRATED SCHOOL SERIES, comprising: The Young Catholic’s Illustrated Primer, Speller, First Reader, Second Reader, Third Reader, and Fourth Reader. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren St. 1874. Every effort which is likely, in any way, to help on the great work of Catholic education, has of course our entire sympathy. Humanly speaking, the destiny of the church in the United States is to be determined by the education which we give to our children, and the almost universal recognition of this truth by the Catholics of America is, we are persuaded, the most certain evidence that we have really made progress. It is only within a comparatively recent time that we have come to fully realize the inevitable and fatal results of allowing our children to frequent the public schools, and to thoroughly understand that the common‐ school system of education, based, as it is, upon the implied assumption of the untruth of positive religion, logically and in fact leads to infidelity or to what is scarcely less an evil—religious indifference. The church without the school‐house is incomplete, and can at best do but half work; and we consequently find that almost all of our bishops are now beginning to demand that every parish shall have its parochial school.