edification! They imagine that it is enough to mention sacred subjects and emit pious or quasi-pious sentiments in order to reach the human heart and strike the _sursum corda_ on its springs! One could afford to laugh at the silly delusion, if the danger did not lie so close to the folly of it. A moment’s reflection and a little humility would suffice to convince these well-meaning persons of their mistake. Many of them might really attain their end of edifying if they had only the sense to confine themselves within the range of their powers. If a beginner, or one endowed with a delicate sense of music but limited musical ability, should attempt to perform one of Beethoven’s glorious sonatas, he would only irritate us by spoiling the masterpiece; but if the same person wisely contented himself with playing some simple air, he might afford genuine and unalloyed pleasure, touching some chord of feeling in the listener’s heart, evoking, mayhap, sweet memories of childhood, sacred and long forgotten. Few things provoke the disgust of an intelligent reader, pious or not, more than to come upon religious platitudes in a book ostensibly written to amuse; and the prospect of meeting with this kind of thing at every page is sufficient to prejudice him against a book which bears a Catholic name on the title-page. Even the name of a Catholic publisher brands it at first sight as “dull and silly.” Here, as elsewhere, the cause and effect react upon each other, and the puerile tone and absence of artistic treatment in the author, by failing to gain the favor and attention of the public, paralyzes the most energetic efforts of Catholic publishers, and those few Catholic writers who can command a wider audience are unavoidably driven to the Protestant publishers in order to secure a hearing.