Turk or the Arab?

FOOTNOTES:

[6] We have received this article from a valued correspondent, whose
name, for obvious reasons, is not given.--ED.

[7] The eve of Courban Beiram.

THE BOLLANDISTS:

THE LITERARY HISTORY OF A MAGNUM OPUS.

The majority of educated people have, from time to time, in the course
of their historical reading, come across some mention of the "Acta
Sanctorum," or "Lives of the Saints;" while but few know anything as to
the contents, or authorship, or history of that work. Yet it is a very
great, nay a stupendous monument of what human industry, steadily
directed for ages towards one point, can effect. Industry, directed for
ages, I have said--an expression, which to some must seem almost like a
misprint, but which is quite justified by facts, since the first volume
issued by the company of the Bollandists, is dated Antwerp, 1643; and
the last, Paris, A.D. 1875. Two hundred and forty years have thus
elapsed, and yet the work is not concluded. Indeed, as it has taken
well-nigh two centuries and a half to narrate the lives of the Saints
commemorated in the first ten months of the year, it may easily happen
that the bones of the present generation will all be mingled with the
dust, before those Saints be reached who are celebrated on the 31st of
December. Some indeed--prejudiced by the very name "Acta Sanctorum"--may
be inclined to turn away, with a contempt bred of ignorance, from the
whole subject. But if it were only as a mental and intellectual tonic
the contemplation of these sixty stately folios, embracing about a
thousand pages each, would be a most healthy exercise for the men of
this age. This is the halcyon period of primers, introductions,
handbooks, manuals. "Knowledge made Easy" is the cry on every side. We
take our mental pabulum just as we take Liebig's essence of beef, in a
very concentrated form, or as hom[oe]opathists imbibe their medicine, in
the shape of globules. I do not desire, however, to say one word against
such publications. The great scholars of the seventeenth century, the
Bollandists, Casaubon, Fabricius, Valesius Baluze, D'Achery, Mabillon,
Combefis, Vossius, Canisius, shut up their learning in immense folios,
which failed to reach the masses as our primers and handbooks do,
penetrating the darkness and diffusing knowledge in regions inaccessible
to their more ponderous brethren. But at the same time their majestic
tomes stand as everlasting protests on b