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edited by Vermesch, the late Editor of the too celebrated Père Duchêne. The next floors embrace three important establishments, a laundry; a Roman Catholic School; and an organ manufactory. But we again descend, and arrive at the Labour Enquiry Office, and the Boardman's Society. From which latter, a "living sandwich" may be hired at Is. 9d. a day. Is our reader perplexed at the term "living sandwich? " Well, it is a man; generally a shabby used-up old man, flattened between two boards marvellously inscribed by the printer's art with letters in red and black, or, may be, blue and green. He, or it, wanders hopelessly and helplessly from gutter to gutter of our winding streets, no doubt much benefiting and enlightening our British public.

But to continue our descent. At last we have arrived at the ground floor, and now we find ourselves in the "Maison des Etrangers," a rendezvous for foreigners. And here No. 59 attains its ultimatum of incongruities. Here, are held strange gatherings from day to day. To begin with the first day of the week: on Sunday, at 3.30 P.M., there is a French Bible Class; at 7 P.M. an Italian Service. On Monday, at 2.30 P.M., there is a meeting for "Women only." While French women stitch, and German women knit, reading and conversation are carried on, under the direction of an English lady who presides. Most of these French women passed through the trials of the siege of Paris. In many cases they were alone and unprotected, their husbands being Germans who had fled to London. Each woman has her own sad tale to tell, now and then lightened up by a joke at the odd necessities of her past state of privation. A note or two from these experiences in the matter of strange meats may not be without its interest. Horseflesh is generally declared good, but tending to toughness. Rats are "excellent." But here there is a delicate discrimination: the "common rat of the sewers " is pronounced "pas bon." Mice are more delicate than chicken. Dog is "nasty," but more especially "ribs of dog." Cats, "when frozen before cooking," are "delicious," "preferable to rabbits." This is

sad news for the old maids of Soho who love their "pussy." Puss will most assuredly, sooner or later, find her way into the "Pot au feu," leaving no remains to be tenderly wept over. On each evening there are classes for "Men only," for instruction in English. In one such class, a few evenings back, were two matter-of-fact Dutchmen, four sedate Germans, three Italians, one an old Roman, four frivolous Frenchmen, seriously pondering over an easy lesson-book, and a cosmopolitan Jew; all being taught by an English Gentile.

The classes being ended, there is full liberty to each to speak in his own tongue; and as all avail themselves of the opportunity and speak at once: guttural German, polished French, and musical Italian combine to produce a discord, which not unworthily reflects the diverse and conflicting elements of humanity, in this strange parish of Soho.

A RESIDENT.
(S. R. BROWN.)

FEBRUARY.

CATHOLICISM.

THE Word Catholic is an all-embracing word. It speaks of the whole as opposed to the part. It is essentially and exclusively of Christian origin. It tells of a whole, both in the matter of entirety and of completeness. Hence it

embraces not some truths of God, but all truth, and in that threefold form which we name as goodness, beauty, wisdom; these, neither in excess nor in defect, but entire; these not alone nor in opposition, but complete. Again, Catholicism is not truth for one time, or one nation, or one person; but for all times, all nations, all people. It is of the past, in the present, for the future. It is from the east to the west. Again, it is truth not for one mind, but for every manner of mind; neither is it linked with one phase of life, but with all phases. We said it was essentially and exclusively Christian. The Jew did not know it, the Heathen did not know it, the Sectarian does not. The Church militant fights for it; the Church triumphant attains it.

Inequality is the law of all human existence. The Church is here militant, its weapons are unequal. Sanctity would seem at one time its foremost witness; Art at another; Intellect at a third. But, as being Catholic, none are altogether wanting. And in each is found the spirit of the other, the spirit of goodness, beauty, and wisdom.

Now, why should we attempt this, as it would seem, mere philosophic definition of the word Catholic? Because we believe it very directly points to certain practical applications

not unneeded at this time. For if the workers in a Catholic system fail to grasp these varied aspects of their work, in the degree that they do so, that work becomes very doubtfully Catholic, and its success in consequence will be very wanting.

When we see in one branch of the Church a mind, the Ultramontane, narrowing the direction of thought, and crushing out the higher intelligence of the day; an intelligence, and a spirit too of charity, which, if in the long run not seen to be Catholic, will witness to itself by the slow destruction of that which opposes. When, again, we see this same mind diligently hindering the approach of the sundered parts of Christ's Church, and resisting that sympathetic spirit which, as by a law of nature, tends to draw all again into one; then we would ask for a philosophy of this same word Catholic.

It was not at all in this spirit, that from the first the Church made her way. No, then she accepted all that was worthy and strong in life, and wedded it to herself. Whether kingship, or learning, or art, or institutions political and social, even to domestic life, she made all her own; and lived in the life of her age, and saved it from harm. Does she hold her faith so cheap that now she quakes before the later intelligences, and the changed spirit of a changing time? Is she so fully self-instructed that there is nothing more to learn? Or, after witnessing in the past the way in which Christ is ever leading on His people, does she believe that in her little day the work is at last accomplished, and there is nothing further to be done? It is sad to look here, and again there, and to see Christ's Church losing hold of her people, because she no longer adequately adapts herself to their changing needs, and so fails to gain their reason and trust.

But unhappily there is no occasion to look beyond our own selves for evidence of this demand, for some truer philosophy of the Catholic. Indeed, it is here at home that such demands are most diverse, and most urgent. To look back only a few years, what was the then Anglo-Catholic idea? In

doctrine, just a hard dogma or so, picked out as by chance, and warranted safe from all Roman errors, and then thrust with most wearisome iteration on the uninstructed lay mind. This, as the measure of all true Churchmanship; this, for a mystical pass-word into the most exalted spheres of the spiritual life. In morals, a severe code of law, in source and manner of demand seemingly in no way from loving Calvary; but rather from the stern Mount of Sinai. In system, that of an elegant, aristocratic, reformed, Anglican, State Church. Such, in its different sides, was our then philosophy of the Catholic. And so entirely were we satisfied with this conception as complete, that the warm love, the Gospel fervour of the school of Wesley, which was the very life of Saints Augustine and Bernard, and, indeed, of all the Saints, and which is the very heart-beat of all Catholic vitality, was esteemed to be a grievous heresy. So cold, so respectable, so sectarian had we become. Hence those who might have brought to us much of Catholic truth, which we were too blind and self-satisfied to reach, were unhappily driven into open hostility, not without pardonable excuse, and the world had to witness a kingdom divided against itself, and that kingdom the Church of Christ.

And what was the rapid result of a movement so defective in Catholic completeness, so one-sided, so party in spirit? First, those who had been most devoted, minds of very unusual grasp and energy, one and then another, in hopelessness left us for a larger, wider, more firmly-established branch of the Church: although that branch was essentially foreign in spirit, and by no means flourishing in its condition. And secondly, there appeared a schism in our own camp. Some great minds who had been our leaders were gone; and the lesser minds, not always very strong, scarcely added brilliancy to the cause, or definiteness to its purpose. Hence forces strongly centrifugal started up, and "Young Oxford" found herself quite other than she had been. Yet, was there any true necessity for this further sundering? This new intel

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