In the preface the author promises to be impartial, and scarcely has he proceeded eight short pages in his little volume before a cynical and sneering spirit betrays him into errors which a Catholic Sunday-school child would blush to commit. On page 8 he says: “Immaculate Conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those days that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage.” And a little further on: “The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception.” This is but a forestalment of the wrath held in store by our author for the dogma proclaimed in 1854, a derisive comparison of it with the gross myths of the superstitious Greeks. And yet how conspicuous does not the allusion render his ignorance of the Catholic doctrine! For evidently the reference to a pure virgin subjected to an immaculate conception through the agency of a God reveals Draper’s belief that the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception consists in the conception of Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary without human intervention. Surely some malign agent had warped his judgment when he assumed to expound Catholic doctrine; had “Made the eye blind, and closed the passages Through which the ear converses with the heart.” But this is not the only point concerning which we would refer persons curious about Catholic doctrines to Dr. Draper, and those who would like to become acquainted with Catholic tenets never promulgated by any council from Nice to the Vatican. On two occasions, speaking of Papal Infallibility, he distinctly avers that it is the same as omniscience! On page 352 he says: “Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, His Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian war.” And again on page 361: “He cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. If it holds good for theology, it necessarily holds good for science.” Here is Catholic doctrine _à la_ Draper! Presumptuous reader, be not deluded by the belief that the Vatican Council expressly confines infallibility to purely doctrinal matters; it could not have done so! Does not Dr. Draper as explicitly affirm that the dogma of infallibility implies omniscience? His individual experience no doubt had much to do with his extension of the term; for, knowing himself to be a good chemist and physiologist, he doubted not that by the same title he was a sound philosopher and a keen-eyed observer of events. If it holds good in chemistry and physiology, it necessarily holds good in philosophy and history. It is a renewal of the old belief of the Stoics, as expounded by Horace, who says that the wise man is a capital shoemaker and barber, alone handsome and a king.