Seldom do we have an opportunity to welcome the appearance of so valuable a book as this, which is the embodiment of those sentiments, views, and convictions that distinguish the modern Irish priest. Few men loved his religion and his native land with a more intense fervor than Father Maher. This double love nourished his frame, increased his strength, stimulated his thoughts, nerved his heart, and underlay every thought and action of his life. He was a man who simply delighted in every opportunity of saying a word or doing a deed in behalf of his creed or his country. As a controversialist his enthusiasm made him almost bitter, but with that bitterness which is born of zeal for the truth. A man of stalwart frame and magnificent proportions, he exercised a magnetic influence over his listeners by his presence alone. Throughout the entire range of controversial literature it would be hard to find anything equal to his scathing arraignment of Archbishop Whately _apropos_ of the Nunnery Inspection bill: “I have myself,” he writes, “two sisters and eighteen nieces who, following the call of Heaven, have selected the religious life. Some of them are in convents in England, some in Ireland, some in America; all engaged in the noble service of forming the tender minds of the children of the poor to virtue, for whose sake and the sake of their Father in heaven they most willingly surrendered in the morning of life all earthly prospects. I well remember what they were under the paternal roof. I know what they are in the cloister. I have never lost sight of them; and as to their happiness, to which I could not be indifferent, I have only to affirm, which I do most solemnly, that I have never known people more happy, more joyous, more light-hearted, or with such buoyant hopes as good _religieuses_. Their character, my lord, is unknown and will remain a mystery to that world for which Christ refused to pray.” These are the brave words of one of the most conspicuous champions of religious freedom, and one of the most determined antagonists of the smelling committee who strove to insult the purest and noblest of women. His spirit is not dead among his _confrères_ in the Irish vineyard, for Cardinal Cullen, the nephew of Father Maher, and the distinguished prelate who has given these inestimable letters to the world—a near relative of the great priest—lives to represent every feeling and pulse of his heart. SPECIALISTS AND SPECIALTIES IN MEDICINE. Address delivered before the Alumni Association of the Medical Department of the University of Vermont. Burlington. 1876.