Henry's mother has received his letter of the 28th. Brownson had been told by Father Remigius Tellier that Ed. Oaksmith had left the novitiate and gone to college in Paris, but infers from Henry's letter that he is still there with him and Henry is asked by Brownson to make him his affectionate remonstrances. Brownson was too busy with his Review to answer Henry's letter of Aug. 8. Brownson finished Mr. Ward's philosophical introduction to his Treatise on Nature and Grace just on the previous day and he considers it a most difficult and perplexing job. Ward is Brownson's old opponent in the Dublin Review and in the latter's opinion Ward has an able but very crooked mind. The matter of sending Henry tobacco through the source suggested has become extremely difficult since his friend has left the steamer. However, Brownson promises that if it is in his power to send it, he will do so at the earliest possible moment. Brownson has not seen Dan Bryan since the day Henry sailed. The Visitor has made no change in the provinces, Father Tellier remaining Superior of the Mission. The Scholasticate is to be located in Conewago, Pennsylvania, but for the present it will remain in Boston with Fathers Gresslin and Verdun as professors of theology. St. John's College promises a better year than last. Ned's professor is Father Vetter, who appears to be an able man and is, according to Ned, an Austrian, an Alsatian or from the Debatable Land, and uses F. Rathenflue for a text book. Brownson's October number has kicked up a babling and made Archbishop John Hughes perfectly frantic. His article on the Rights of the Temporal together with Dr. Jeremiah Cumming's on vocations to the priesthood have done the work. The greatest wrath is shown at the Dr. and a trial is threatened. Although lawyers have been retained Brownson feels the storm will blow over. He expresses the wish that Henry have the opportunity of reading this issue which he thinks to be the best yet and cautions Henry that none of his former positions on papal power has been abandoned nor does he endorse the Emperor's conduct on Count Cavour but has merely attempted to place the temporal principality of the Pope on its true basis as well as to apologize for the Italian people. He does not believe the temporal principality of the Pope necessary to the exercise of his spiritual sovereignty nor that the political and religious interests of Europe require the unification of Italy and elevation of it to the rank of a great power either as a federal state or a unitarian monarchical state. Brownson, however, recognizes no one's right to dispossess the Pope against his conduct. Father Gary, a Benedictine monk of St. Gregory's College, Dawn Side, near Bath, England, has sent Brownson the plan and outline of a philosophy text-book which he is writing in English and in which he takes the system defended by the Review. Brownson is not certain that he can answer Henry's question but discusses the fact that while Descartes holds extension to be the essence of matter, Leibniz, for good reasons, denies it. That extension is not the essence of body, or is only an accident of body is known from the Real Presence in the Blessed Eucharist, a point disputed between Henry and Brownson at a time when the former was translating Balmes. Brownson holds, in the main, F. Boscovich's doctrine, rejects the atomic theory, and agrees with Leibniz that substance is vis activa, and semper involvit conatum. Our bodies in the future state will be transformed or glorified, made like unto the glorious body of our Lord, which we know was impassible, and encountered no resistance in what we call matter. What we call extension, according to Brownson, is simply the force of the body, or the energy of the vis activa, and he sees no difficulty in supposing it to retain in the future its exterior form or circumscription. It would then have extension in heaven in the same sense as it has here. Brownson cautions Henry against supposing that even now it is a congeries of molecules. These, he maintains, are accidents and can be changed without changing the body and disappear without its disappearing. Returning to Henry's difficulty of the vis activa Brownson points out that the soul is separable from the body in one sense, but not from the living body, otherwise communion in a way would not suffice. In the living body the flesh and the body are inseparable, indivisible, as communion in one. The body and blood are indivisible in the Holy Eucharist and Brownson questions Henry's right to say that blood is not of the species of the human body, for when the blood is omitted the body is destroyed, which is, properly speaking, no longer a human body but a carcass monad. For Brownson, the soul is the forma corporis and he is not prepared to maintain that the body is a simple or rather single monad or vis activa. He sees no objection to supposing the body as composite, the union of two or more monads, a living union produced and sustained by joining soul and body. The stigmata which our Lord showed to Thomas may be explained by supposing that His body was not yet glorified since He had not yet ascended to the Father or else they may be regarded as habits of the body retained in the glorified state, as are the habits of the soul. The soul carries with it its habits or else it would not retain the divinity infused or a priori in this life and so why should not the body then retain its habits. Heaven and hell Brownson regards as primarily as a state rather than a place, heaven not being above the stars any more than hell is under or in the centre of the earth. However, he will not say that heaven is not a place but that he is not in the habit of thinking of it as a place. God is here and everywhere, in us and outside of us; the souls of the departed are not physically at a distance from us; the saints, though above us by virtue and beatitude, can hear us when we pray to them. Space and therefore place has nothing in it and space is only the relation of existences to one another and simply designates the relative degrees of their respective forces. Hence, the distance of two existences from one another is not a distance of space, but a difference of their respective forces. Equalize in all respects the vis activa of each and there will be no distance, no space between them. The different orders in heaven Brownson attributes to various degrees of participation in Being, which God has as His first and formal cause. This is substantially what Henry claims only he speaks as an ascetic and Brownson as a philosopher or speculative theologian. Whether all souls are created equal or not, all souls do not attain to equal virtue and hence do not participate equally in beatitude. Brownson believes that Henry's main difficulty grows out of some remains of the old doctrine or false notions of space and from regarding it as place rather than a state. Space is the different degree in which existences spiritual or material participate in being, that is in God as first cause. And the various degrees of our virtues may be called moral space. In some sense space may be considered as being in heaven activity as well as on earth though not time because heaven admits of no change or vicissitudes. Brownson admits that these are only crude thoughts of his own reflection, not having had time to consult what the theologians say, and suggests that they will meet Henry's difficulties. If they should not, Brownson wishes his son to state to him wherein the difficulties lie if the house rules permit. -- He has taken a slightly active part in elections lately and favours Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, the Republican candidate whom Brownson claims will be the next president without much difficulty. Horace Greely and Brownson both addressed a political meeting a few evenings previous at the Port. The Democratic party is very much divided and has two candidates in the field, Douglas and Breckinridge. The Americans have Bell of Tenessee and Edward Everett for president and vice-president. The South threatens terribly, but will submit. Henry is urged to tell his friends in Europe to have no fear. Brownson fears that some of his friends in France are in political movements not friendly to the Imperial government and declares that he himself is no friend of the Empire or of the Imperial regime but is opposed to a new revolution in France and to any dynastic change. Only such changes, as those not detrimental to the dynasty or to the position and powers of the present Emperor as chief of the state, are favoured; nor does he wish a republic or the Bourbons. In regard to Italy, Brownson wishes matters there were permanently settled. He does not share the general distrust of the Italian people and has no fears on the score of religion should the Pope ever leave his temporal principality. The pastorals of the bishops Brownson has rejoiced in, since they prove their attachment to the papacy but they contain many things as to the temporal principality of the pope which he thinks unwarranted either by history or theology. These are matters in which his son can but take little interest just now since it is his business to sever his affections from the world and to acquire the habit of being in himself in interior communion with God. Henry seems happy in the Jesuits and the choice of a vocation has been a great relief on the rest. His absence left Brownson very lonely at first but he has since became reconciled and remarks that he would follow his son's example were he a young man again. He is weary of the cares and vexations of the world and finds it no easy matter to take care of his soul. Henry is to remember his father in his communions. He is remembered in his father's. Brownson urges Henry to persevere in the good that he has entered and admits that while the life may be rugged, God's grace is sufficient if relied upon. Henry is to fix his eye on God, to guard against melancholy and anxiety, to cultivate cheerfulness and learn to laugh at trials and difficulties; to take his crosses good humoredly, to attempt no more than he can carry through and to exercise his American habit of being in a hurry. The well-prepared workman will do more in a year than an ill-prepared one in a lifetime and God rather than the person himself is the one Who does the work. Henry's mother has almost completely regained her former health of a year ago and Sarah's health and temper have much improved. Ned is doing well; Orestes is working along, but is having a hard time of it; Brownson's health is passable and his spirits are good and his Review is going so, so. He has not received the Etudes de Theologie since the previous December and suspects the fault to be with F.O.A., who probably neglected attending to it. Brownson mentions the beginning of a new era in the life of the Review. All questions, not pertaining to faith or discipline from the American point of view, will be discussed. Its stand is taken and it is now live or or die. They are about to be no longer expatriated in their own country. Brownson will be a Roman Catholic but not European or Greek. Henry is told to write as often as he can. P.S. Father Mac Clellan late of the Church of the Transfiguration has resigned his parish to become a Jesuit. He is supposed to go to France for his novitiate and Brownson is in the hope that Mr. Runsal ? will go with him, although he has been recently suspended for a trifle. The seminary is discontinued. :: III-3-a A.L.S. 8pp. 12mo.