Foy has received Brownson's letters of the 1st and encloses John Gilmary Shea's letter, as he requested. There is a good deal in what he says, in fact it is strictly true; but if Catholics have nothing of note in the fine arts, neither have any other class or division of Americans. The native genius of the American people does not take that direction. If one comes to literature Catholics have not so much to boast of. Gosse, the critic, says we have produced no great poet, and such Foy believes to be the case, although Foe has produced some marvellous strains—most musical and melancholy. Hawthorne pere is undoubtedly a great novelist and Uncle Tom's cabin a great novel, but the rest of our fiction is of small account. Neither have we produced a first class historian, though we have, and have had, several historical writers of distinction. He questions whether America has produced any great orators but Patrick Henry and Webster, or any philosopher worthy of the name during the existence of the Government but Brownson's father Orestes A. Brownson. Of course he does not forget Franklin, who was a great natural philosopher in more senses than one. He and his famous contemporaries in public life were the greatest philosophical politicians and statesmen that have ever lived and he does not place him in the first class. In the Revolutionary constellation he was not a star of the first magnitude. In politics, statemanship, applied science, mechanical inventions, engineering, well excel all other nations, and considering all the circumstances may be well content with this, for the future will probably give Catholics everything they desire. From the tenor of Shea's letter, Foy infers that Brownson outlined the paper which he asked him to write. If so, he made a mistake and Shea looks at the matter from the wrong point. Not what Catholics have done in the fields of literature, art and science, but how they have grown and the providential courses of that growth are the theses to be handled in a historical paper. This was so evident to Foy that he has devoted a page to it in the article on the Congress for the July Quarterly, and he begs Brownson to read it attentively, as he cannot write it over again.He would ask Richard H. Clarke to write the paper but not until the Quarterly comes out. He has marked the two suggestions of Shea which he would convey to Clarke. Brownson might tell Shea to choose his own subject, if he is willing to cooperate, but Foy would not entrust the historical paper to him. A layman, Otten, here is capable of producing a masterly paper on Church music and Foy will speak to him at once if Brownson says so. He has broached the subject to him already, in the presence of Father J. J. Hughes, and if Brownson has written to no other person for a paper on the subject, Foy anticipates no difficulty in getting him to undertake the work. P.S.: He has not seen Henry J. Spaunhorst yet. :: III-3-b A.L.S. 8pp. 8vo.