always spiteful and tyrannical, that it really needed no proof in any individual instance. Of course she was.

Remembering the strength of these miserable prejudices, we are able to believe that the jurymen in the late case were guilty of no intentional or conscious injustice. But, alas, it is only because we are compelled to acknowledge that the mind of the nation at large is still so far warped, that in a case which touches Catholic nuns or Catholic priests (not to say, even Catholic laity, if they are suspected of being Catholics more than in name), it is still morally incapable of seeing and appreciating what is just and what is unjust. The jury is acquitted, but, alas, Patria damnatur.

Yes, alas, greatly as things are on the whole improved, "Trial by Jury," the boast and confidence of Englishmen, the "Palladium of British Freedom," is still to Catholics alone no protection against the grossest injustice-to them alone it still is "a fraud, a delusion, and a snare." Twenty years ago it used to be said that for any man wholly without scruples of conscience, especially if he were, in name, a Catholic, there could be no safer speculation, than to bring an action against Cardinal Wiseman. He had (every one felt) no need whatever of even a plausible case, but was from the first sure of success. What was true then is not less true now. It requires only to put in the place of Cardinal Wiseman the name of any Catholic authority, or even of any individual Catholic, provided he is supposed to be earnest in his religion.

And what makes this even more evident is, that in this case the jury was not, as has sometimes been said, composed of London shopkeepers. It was, with a few exceptions, a special jury, upon which none are qualified to sit except they be "described in the jurors' list as esquires or of higher degree, or as bankers or merchants." Such a jury, perhaps, more than any other, is really qualified to represent the country-the common prejudices and feelings of Englishmen-what in common parlance is described as "John Bull." And the applause with which the verdict was greeted, not only by the "unthinking populace," as the Lord Chief Justice said, outside the court; but, with very few exceptions, by the public press, marks the injustice even more strongly as a national act.

Once again, then, we are in the presence of that miserable evil, that plague-spot upon our race and nation, that prejudice

* We see with real regret that not even the Ritualist newspapers are, as we should have hoped, altogether an exception. They cannot, of course, like the other Protestant newspapers, attack the religious life as such. But too generally they betray almost as much pleasure at any sneers at the sisters who are the special objects of injustice.

which, it has been most truly said, is "The life of the Protestant view." "Where are the tender hearts, the kind feelings, the upright understandings of our countrymen and countrywomen? Where is the generosity of the Briton, of which from one's youth up one has been so proud? Where is his love of fair play, and his compassion for the weak, and his indignation at the oppressor, when we are concerned? The most sensible people on the earth, the most sensitive of moral inconsistency, the most ambitious of propriety and good taste, would rather commit themselves in the eyes of the whole world; would rather involve themselves in the most patent incongruities and absurdities; would rather make sport, as they do by their conduct, for their enemies in the four quarters of the earth, than be betrayed into any portion-I will not say of justice, I will not say of humanity and mercy, but of simple reasonableness and common sense, in their behaviour to the professors of the Catholic religion; so much so, that to state even drily and accurately what they do is to risk being blamed for ridicule and satire, which, if anywhere, would be simply gratuitous and officious in this matter, where truth most assuredly when unadorned' is adorned the most."" Nor can we shut our eyes to the miserable truth that this prejudice is "not laughable but hateful and dangerous-dangerous to the Catholic, hateful to the Supreme Judge. When you see a beast of prey in his cage, you are led to laugh at its impotent fury, its fretful motions and its sullen air, and its grotesque expressions of impatience, disappointment, and malice if it is balked of its revenge. And as to this Prejudice, really it is in itself one of the direst, most piteous, most awful phenomena in the whole country, to see a noble, generous people the victims of a moral infirmity, which is now a fever, now an ague, now a falling sickness, now a S. Vitus's dance. Oh, if we could see as the angels see! Thus should we speak of it, and in language far more solemn-not simply because the evil comes from beneath, as I believe it does-not only because it so falls upon the soul and occupies it, that it is like a bad dream or nightmare, which is so hard to shake off, but because it is one of the worst sins of which our poor nature is capable." *

Our quotation is growing beyond reasonable limits, and we can hardly doubt that it is familiar to all our readers.

What is left for us Catholics but to call upon Him" who alone can rule the unruly wills and affections of sinful men,”—to call

*Lectures on the present position of Catholics in England. By J. H. Newman, D.D., Lecture VI.

upon Him in the words of His prophet, "Lord, open the eyes of these men that they may see." That before it is too late they may see in those, of whom their traditionary prejudice now leads them to assume, without deeming any proof necessary, every conceivable abomination, the indwelling (even now scarcely veiled, for it beams through their meek countenances which breathe a peace not of this world, and through their Christ-like lives) of Him for whose visible return the whole creation is waiting, groaning, and travailing in pain; of Him to whom His people are ever crying out, from all quarters of the world, in the varying tongues of all kindreds and nations and tribes

"Come then, and, added to Thy many crowns,
Receive yet one-the crown of all the earth.
Thou who alone art worthy! It was Thine
By ancient covenant ere nature's birth.
And Thou hast made it Thine by purchase since,
And overpaid its value with Thy blood.
Thy Saints proclaim Thee King, and Thy delay
Gives courage to their foes, who, could they see
The dawn of Thy last advent long desired,
Would creep into the bowels of the earth,
And flee for shelter to the falling rocks."

Of that day Father Harper says, in a very solemn passage of his beautiful sermon,* just published,

The Resurrection in its fulness will then be accomplished. For Christ shall rise from death, in His mystical body the Church. And then each silent transfiguration of her every member shall be told out publicly before the generations of time, and "there is nothing secret which shall not be revealed.” Then the life of grace shall hold its own; and the last shall be first, and the first last. On that day trials shall be reheard, unjust judgments reversed, the calumniator exposed, and innocence fully justified. Then those hirelings of bigotry and of hatred to Christ's Church, who have insulted Him in His chosen spouses, will be glad to shelter themselves beneath that lowly veil, which in the very precincts of a court of justice-nay, in the court itself, till the stern authority of the judge interfered-has been made the object of ribaldry and illegal sibilations. Then history will end, newspapers perish in the flames of judgment, and the world's feverish turmoil come to nought; but each deed of grace, not one excepted, shall live for ever, recorded by angels in the book of life. That will be a history of which the world has little dreamt, and which will teach it a wisdom, that alas! will come too late"

What follows is too solemn to be quoted here; although we

* We have noticed elsewhere this sermon, and that of Father Coleridge, S.J., on the same subject.

would heartily wish to commend it to the serious attention of all, whether Protestants or Catholics, who are tempted by the sympathy of those around them, and by the general acclamation of the world in which they live to take part by deed, or word, or thought, or silence, against those "whom God delights in, and in whom He dwells."

Most truly and forcibly has it been shown, both by F. Harper and F. Coleridge, that the general feeling of our English world, even of those who have spoken in the most friendly tone of the late revelation of the interior of the religious life, has been that of men quite unconscious of all that is summed up in the one word Nazareth. Most strange, most lamentable inconsistency-this is the case with multitudes who would be sincerely shocked if it were supposed that they disbelieve the doctrine it expresses. They do not disbelieve it, but they do not see that it has any bearing upon common, trivial, everyday life. Surely common sense ought to bear witness that if the Eternal Creator really became an infant, a child, a boy, a man, and went through the trivial ground of man's life; and has chosen out of the world a people to be conformed to His image; it is impossible that there can be any action of their lives too trivial to perpetuate and reflect that astounding mystery. Such inconsistencies, experience tells us, are not uncommon, but it tells us also that they are the marks of a period of transition-that a people which forms the habit of acting and speaking and thinking as if it did not acknowledge, a truth which is in its nature most strictly practical, is on the point of consciously abandoning it. another generation has passed, we may be too sure, the class of men who now admit the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, but regard it as an unpractical doctrine, will have learnt to deny it. There is, then, no time to be lost, and we may thank God that the Catholic Church, so long, like the prophet, driven by persecution into the wilderness, has once more come forward, like him, face to face with the multitude of our countrymen, to cry, "How long will ye halt between two opinions; if the Lord be God follow Him, but if Baal then follow him!"

Before

And assuredly, inasmuch as actions do more than words, there are none by whom this appeal is so forcibly impressed upon our countrymen as by those men and women, who have given up all for Christ, and whose lives re-echo what the life of the Blessed Apostle also taught before he put in words, "The things that were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for

Whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him." Many, no doubt, of those who are following his example are living in the world. But the world knows them not. But whether it will hear, or whether it will refuse, the lesson is forced upon it, by those of either sex who are specially called to a visible and professed conflict with the opinions and the course of their age and nation. The Solicitor-General expressed an opinion that "in the Middle Ages, when men were rougher, if they were more simple, than they are now, the great monastic system had its recommendations as well as its faults, but that it is altogether unsuited to the people of this time and the wants of the world in which we live." In truth, however, necessary as it is in both states of society, it seems more needed now than then. For the peculiar danger of times peaceable, civilized, and smooth like ours, is from the world. In rough and violent times the power of the flesh and the devil may have been greater; but that of the world was comparatively small. In the Middle Ages it was not merely by great Saints, like S. Elizabeth of Hungary, that the world was despised and trampled upon. Her greatest persecutors, great princes, who, but a while before, had violently struck her, without shame or scruple, in a manner which, in our day, would have been disgraceful to a coalheaver, were no sooner touched with the sense of their sins, than they willingly abased themselves in humble penance before the eyes of the whole world.* In our day, the course of society is so smooth and unbroken, that although, thank God, there are many whose inward lives are lives of faith, prayer, and penance, there would be nothing to bear open witness, seen and read of all men (as S. Paul says), that the whole course of the world, its wealth, pleasures, refinement, luxury, ambition, greatness, are but an empty sham, and that the true measure of all things is the Cross of Christ; if we had not our societies of men and women, whose whole lives are openly and visibly devoted to the imitation of the Cross. In England, too, as it now is, they are, in one respect, far more blessed than they were in the Middle Ages, inasmuch as they are more like their Lord. Then, as now, they were like Him in poverty, labours, and sufferings. But in the Middle Ages, rich and poor, nobles and serfs, vied with each other to do them honour. Emperors and kings humbly asked to be permitted to die in their habit, and to be buried in their cloisters. In our modern world they are despised and reviled. In our day, then, they have one beatitude

* See Montalembert's "Life of S. Elizabeth."