The persecution of the Church in England in the time of Elizabeth resembled the persecution which is now raging against it, in the political complexion given to it. But there were far stronger grounds for it then than now. The superior claims of Mary to the throne, her virtues, and her surpassing beauty, were a just subject of jealousy and uneasiness to Elizabeth, and she might very naturally suppose that her Catholic subjects were not likely to regard with any fondness the usurpation of an illegitimate daughter of her apostate and tyrannical father. In the present persecutions there is no political pretext, but one is made under cover of which to extirpate from among mankind the religion and very name of Christ. This volume is the second of a series which promises to supply us with a whole gallery of Christian heroes, which we of this age of worldliness, cowardice, and self-seeking will do well to study attentively. As is often the case, it is to the untiring zeal of the Society of Jesus we owe so interesting as well as edifying a work. Father Morris, formerly Secretary to Cardinal Wiseman, but who joined the Society after the death of that eminent prelate, is its author, and he appears to us to have executed his task with rare judgment. By allowing his characters to speak in great part for themselves, the biographies and relations he presents us with have a dramatic interest which is greatly increased by the quaint and nervous style of the time in which they express themselves. We feel, too, that it is the very innermost soul and mind of the individual that is being revealed to us; and certainly in most of them the revelation is so beautiful that we should possibly have ascribed something of this to the partiality of a panegyrist, or to his descriptive skill, if the picture had been sketched by the pen of any other biographer than themselves. It is, indeed, the mean opinion they evidently have of themselves, and the naïve and modest manner in which they relate incidents evoking heroic virtue, their absolute unconsciousness of aught more than the most ordinary qualities, which fascinate us. It bears an impress of genuineness impossible to any description by the most impartial of historians. They express a beauty which could no more be communicated in any other way than can the odor of the flower or the music of the streams be conveyed by any touch, how ever magic, of the painter. The present volume of the series contains the “Life of Father William Weston, S.J.,” and “The Fall of Anthony Tyrrell,” by Father Persons; for “our wish is,” says Father Morris, “to learn not only what was done by the strong and brave, but also by the weak and cowardly.” We are much struck in this history with the resemblance between those times and the present in the unsparing calumny of which the purest and the holiest men were made the victims.