Had Dr. Draper taken down from his library shelf the _Summa_ of S. Thomas, the great extinguisher of Draper’s philosophical beacon, Averroës, he would have received such enlightenment as would have made him blush to concur in a proposition so utterly unphilosophical. The Father, as principle of the Son’s existence, is co-existent with him as God, and logically only prior to him as father, just as a circle is the source whence the equality of the radii springs; though, given a circle, the equality of the radii co-exists, and, if an eternally existing circle be conceived, an eternal equality of radii ensues. The priority is therefore one of reason, viz., the priority of a cause to a co-existing effect. But we have said _satis superque_ concerning Draper and his book. We deplore, not so much the publication of the volume, as the unhealthy condition of the public mind which can hail its appearance with welcome. As an appetite for unnatural food argues a diseased state of the bodily system, so we infer that men’s minds are sadly diseased when they take pleasure in what is so hollow, false, and shallow as Dr. Draper’s latest addition to anti-Catholic literature. We have been obliged to suppress a considerable portion of the criticisms we had prepared on particular portions of this rambling production, in order not to take up too much space. We consider it not to be worth the space we have actually given to its refutation. And yet, of such a book, one of our principal daily papers has been so unadvised or thoughtless as to say that it ought to be made a _text-book_. To this proposition we answer by the favorite exclamation of the wife of Sir Thomas More: “TILLEY-VALLEY!” STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE. CHAPTER II. A DINNER AT THE GRANGE--A PAIR OF OWLS. As we passed up the gravel walk of the Grange a face was trying its prettiest to look scoldingly out of the window, but could not succeed. When the eyes lighted upon my companion, face and eyes together disappeared. It was a face that I had seen grow under my eyes, but it had never occurred to me hitherto that it had grown so beautiful. Could that tall young lady, who did the duties of mistress of the Grange so demurely, be the little fairy whom only yesterday I used to toss upon my shoulder and carry out into the barnyard to see the fowls, one hand twined around my neck, and the other waving her magic wand with the action of a little queen--the same magic wand that I had spent a whole hour and a half--a boy’s long hour and a half--in peeling and notching with my broken penknife, engraving thereon the cabalistic characters “F. N.,” which, as all the world was supposed to know, signified “Fairy Nell”? And that was “Fairy” who had just disappeared from the honeysuckles. Faith! a far more dangerous fairy than when I was her war-horse and she my imperious queen.