sented to us two itineraries, one of
which seems to have escaped general notice. One is the record of
Antoninus Martyr, a traveller in the seventh century. This is well known
and often quoted. The other is the diary of a Greek priest, Joannes
Phocas, describing "the castles and cities from Antioch to Jerusalem,
together with the holy places of Syria, Ph[oe]nicia, and Palestine," as
they were seen by him in the year 1185. This manuscript, first published
in the "Acta Sanctorum," was discovered in the island of Chios, by Leo
Allatius, afterwards librarian of the Vatican. It is very rich in
interesting details concerning the state of Palestine and Christian
tradition in the twelfth century. The Bollandists again were the first
to bring prominently forward in the last volume of June the "Ancient
Roman Calendar of Polemeus Silvius." This seems to have been a combined
calendar and diary, kept by some citizen of Rome in the middle of the
fifth century. It records from day to day the state of the weather, the
direction of the wind, the birthdays of eminent characters in history,
poets like Virgil, orators like Cicero, emperors like Vespasian and
Julian; and is at the same time most important as showing the large
intermixture of heathen ideas and fashions which still continued
paramount in Rome a century and a half after the triumph of
Christianity.

The new Bollandists, indeed, do not produce such exhaustive monographs
as their predecessors did; but we cannot join in the verdict of the
writer in the new issue of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," who tells us
that the continuation is much inferior to the original work. Some of
their articles manifest a critical acquaintance with the latest modern
research, as, for instance, their dissertation on the Homerite Martyrs
and the Jewish Homerite kingdom of Southern Arabia, wherein they display
their knowledge of the work done by the great Orientalists of England
and Germany, while in their history of St. Rose, of Lima, A.D. 1617,
they celebrate the only American who was ever canonized by the Roman
Catholic Church, and, at the same time, give us a fearful picture of the
austerities to which fanaticism can lead its victims. Perhaps to some
readers one of the most interesting points about this great work, when
viewed in the light of modern history, will be the complete change of
front which it exhibits on one of the test questions about Papal
Infallibility. One of the great difficulties in