Abyssinia and Its Apostle. By Lady Herbert. (Burns and Oates.)
—Our readers should bo informed that the Apostle of Abyssinia was one Justin do Jacobis, an Italian, of the Lazarist mission, who died about seven years ago. So Lady Herbert, or the anonymous French writer whom she translates, has decreed, deposing St. Frutnentius and the Jesuit Father Paez, the ancient and modern claimants of the honour. Let it bo so. Every one will agree in hoping that the seal of his apostle- ship will be given by results of work more durable than theirs. Mgr. Jacobis seems, as far as the inflated rhetoric of his biographer permits as to see the real man, to have been a good specimen of the best class of Romish ecclesiastics, the missionary priests. " With no clothes but a coarse shirt and drawers, and a bit of linen round his head, sleeping
on a cow's skin, and eating food which, to a European, is next to impos- sible,"—there is the pioture of the bishop. It does not snit us, yet there may be something in it which we do not find in our clean and well-clad missionaries. Bravo, self-sacrificing, utterly careless of his own ease he was, after the manner of his class, and more sensible than some of those about him, witness tho following :—" At Malta a crowd of people came running up to us, who had just been assisting at M. do Jacobis's mass, and who exclaimed one after the other, 'Gentlemen, who is this saint you have brought with you ? We distinctly saw the infant Jesus above his head, from the moment of the elevation till after the oommunion.' Of this we never dared say a word to him." Miracles, however, would have boon quite wasted in Abyssinia, where it seems a man can take out his intestines, clean them, put them back in their place, and be very much the batter for it. Persons who may wish to try the experiment must remember to be moderate in their diet after the operation. Thera is an account of Theodore, who, at all events, had the merit of excluding Protestant Bibles from his country.
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