ficed a lamb in my church, at Littlemore, on Good Friday. I being attired in the robes of a Roman Catholic priest; that I always elevate the host in the Romish manner; that I detain the congregation while I mutter, in an inaudible tone, the canon of the mass; and that I wear a cope and stole, green, red, violet, white, or black, according to the season of the year; having altar coverings of the same colours.

Ed. R.-Well, and is this true or otherwise?

Mr. N.-I suppose a Jesuit's denial will not weigh much with you; but the charge, if you have made it is false; I certainly never dreamed of re-establishing Jewish sacrifices. I never wore a green, red, violet, or white cope, or indeed a cope of any colour; and I should like to know if what I said was inaudible, how you came to know that it was the canon of the mass?

Ed. R.-I cannot, without reference, say whether such a charge was brought against you or not in the columns of the "Record," as I do not carry it all in my head; but really I think the matter one of mighty little consequence.

Mr. N. Of little consequence? why, I call such accusations downright lies-breaches of the ninth commandment; and they tend very little to establish a character for evangelical truth.

Ed. R.-It seems you can use hard words yourself when they suit your purpose; but when I say that the matter is one of very little consequence, I mean that it is much more consequence that the religious world should be rightly informed of the principles professed by you, and those like you, than that all the little trifling details, such as you mention, should be accurately reported.

Mr. N.-Why, this is mending matters with a vengeance; so you absolutely justify lying, and avow, that your paper thinks that if it depresses an opponent, it is a lawful weapon?

Ed. R.—I did not say any such thing; I had much rather that it had been all true; but if it be not-if it shows only your spirit and tendencies, why, after all, it is more true than erroneous.

Mr. N. And so you call such absurdities and calumnies trifling details?

Ed. R.-We never state anything, without what we believe in our conscience to be good authority; we have a solemn duty to fulfil, and we must depend on our esteemed and pious correspondents for details.

Mr. N. I believe in my conscience that you invent your own correspondence that as Dickens would say you heard it from " Mrs. Harris."

Ed. R.-I wish that as a clergyman, professing, therefore, truly or not, godliness, that you would abstain from quoting that profane writer, Dickens; the sneers of that hardened infidel against shepherds and deputy-shepherds are truly awful!

Mr. N.-I am not here to defend Mr. Dickens; I should have offered up my prayers this morning to the blessed saint Ingulphus (whose festival it is) very vainly, if I had not at heart something more important to the interests of the Catholic Church.

Ed. R.-Why, what you have done now is ample justification for all

we have said; your bowing and crossing yourself at the name of Ingulphus, and acknowledging that you have prayed to him, made him your mediator-a sinful-mortal-possibly, an apocryphal being-a sort of what you would profanely call an ecclesiastical "Mrs. Harris." Mr. N.-That you should doubt the existence of that holy saint, is very likely; for your gross ignorance of all Church matters is only to be equalled by your unparelleled presumption in talking about them. I know, experimentally, his existence; for once he worked a miracle on my behalf.

Ed. R.-Indeed! what was that?

Mr. N.-I wanted to read his life in the " Acta Sanctorum;" the book was on a high shelf; I was not able to reach it, and the ladder was away. I breathed a prayer to that eminent saint, and he forthwith lifted me up in his arms to the shelf, so that I reached down the blessed book.

Ed. R.-Indeed! How much you must have been edified when you got it! Pray, if it be a fair question, what does the Bishop of Oxford say to all these "Extravagantes Communes?"

Mr. N.-Alas! the Bishop of Oxford is yet quite a child in the grand doctrine of Catholic development. We are obliged to regard many duties in these days, as far superior to canonical obedience; there is a higher duty in the Church than that of a bishop.

Ed. R.-That is the most Christian thing I have heard you say yet. Our bishops are, as you rightly remark, mere babes in Christian truth; it is very satisfactory to find one subject on which we can agree.

Mr. N.-The political character of our Church; her dependance on the State; the merely secular views with which incompetent and otherwise improper men are made bishops, in order that they may support in the House of Lords the government of the day, are most lamentable.

Ed. R.-Ah! my dear friend, it is indeed frightful! The Bishops of London, Exeter, Salisbury, and many more, are half Papists. Those of Durham, Norwich, St. David's, and many more, are half infidels; and all are desperately wanting in real piety. We once looked with some hope on the Bishop of Chester; but, alas! for Christian consistency! he was one winter day seen walking on the ice, at Chester, and though a curate of his diocese was skating at the time, the bishop did not choose to take any notice of this sad dereliction of duty.

Mr. N.—I am not quite prepared to go into detail on the question; but as to the bench at large, I quite agree with you, and you see how we—that is, I and my friends-carry our principle into practice; we pay respect and obedience to ecclesiastical authority, whether it be episcopal or university, exactly so far as it represents our own views.

Ed. R.-I am glad to find that our differences are not so extensive as I had imagined. We do not object to bishops in the abstract, but we object to them in any other way; an ideal Bishop of London is very good, but Dr. Bloomfield or any other Doctor, is very objectionable; a Bishop of Exeter may be all very well, but defend us from Dr. Phillpotts!

Mr. N.-I have nothing to say in favour of the individuals, but still I respect the episcopal office.

Ed. R.-Let me ask you, candidly, as a man of learning, which you are reputed to be, do you not consider the “apostolical succession" as a most disgraceful humbug?

Mr. N.-By no means. I do not believe in an apostolical succession in the Anglican Church; but I do not, therefore, disbelieve its existence, nor do I think it wise to proclaim my disbelief with regard to our possessing it ourselves.

Ed. R.-Well, then, we have here another ground of union. It is certainly on different grounds that we have come to our conclusion; but we have come to it. I believe that the whole doctrine of bishop, priest, and deacon, is absurd and unscriptural. You object to bishops individually; doubt the apostolical succession of Anglican priests; make canonical obedience a matter of convenience; consider the Church of England as in a lame and crippled state, and look for further "developments" before that Church can be made effective. And yet we are both sound Churchmen, or claim to be such-both instructors of the ignorant, and defenders of the faith.

So do I.

Mr. N.—If we are both honest, we must be desirous of working great changes in the Church; what those are, it may be inconvenient to inquire. Ed. R.-I could have put the matter in a "nicer" way, but it is a great satisfaction to find that we agree so well.

Mr. N.-I hope, then, you will contradict the story about the lamb and the copes, and content yourself with abusing the bishops and those of the clergy who support them.

Ed. R.-We shall do the latter, but not the former. Indeed, I do not remember that we ever said any such thing; at all events we never contradict any statements of that nature; if others contradict them, we have always means to prove ourselves in the right.

Mr. N.- How would you manage in this case?

Ed. R.-(In a frank and good-humoured manner)-Do not ask editorial secrets! If you had a shoulder of lamb for dinner at any time, we should say that " our respected correspondent at Littlemore had, indeed, been slightly inaccurate; for that the lamb was sacrificed at the parsonage, though not at the church; and thus our statements were, in the main, correct." Then our feelings of deep and irrepressible indig. nation would get the better of us, and we should bespatter you worse than

ever.

Mr. N.-I am glad we think so much alike; but I cannot help considering your mode of warfare as a low one. Yet, perhaps, it may take with low people.

Ed. R.-Do you suppose, then, that the readers of the "Record" are low people?

Mr. N.-I am told that a considerable number of respectable people read the " rag of scurrility," as Mr. Wackerbarth called it; but that few approve it. They read it for the scandal it contains.

very

Ed. R. Then you have less reason to care for what it asserts.

Mr. N. The poison is not altogether neutralized even by this, Ifia thief told me that another person was stealing my property, I should look on the party accused with some suspicion, even though well aware of the character of the accuser.

Ed. R.-Come, come, do not let us get uncomplimentary again, after so nice and Christian a discourse as that which we have had...

Mr. N. Farewell; and I recommend you to St. Jerome, for he had rather an objurgatory tongue sometimes.

fr

CONVERSATIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES.
No. II.

The Rev. ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

F. M. the DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

Mr. R. M.-The petition which we solicit your Grace to present, is one against further concessions to Rome, and against any scheme, however gigantic, of godless education.

The D.-In other words, condemnatory of the plans of the present Government, to which you are pleased to apply these hard terms. Now, as I am a member of that Government, and approve the schemes which you so designate, I must, if I present your petition, express my own dissent from the tenor of its prayer.

Mr. R. M.-Just as your Grace pleases; though I confess I am astonished to find that such are your sentiments. The D.-I am not aware that there can be any sufficient cause for your surprise. I carried Catholic Emancipation in 1829; and though I disapproved of the details of the Reform Bill, yet when I found that it was necessary to suppress agitation, I made, as you well know, an offer to carry it myself.

Mr. M.-I am aware of the fact, and consider your Grace's political shoulders as the most Atlantæan I ever heard of; but my surprise is not so much at your carrying out a series of measures which you have begun, but at the whole series itself.

The D.-And may I ask you why?

Mr. M.-I will willingly give your Grace my reasons, though I fear you will not find them complimentary. I look on the whole chain of measures, of which the increased Maynooth grant makes the latest link, as a series of political lies-blots on the records of parliament, and disgrace to the British name.

The D.-If I did not consider you as a very incompetent judge of

state questions, I might, perhaps, be angry; but as I do, nevertheless, consider you a man of mental power, I feel rather curious to know how such very straightforward measures of mere justice should affect your mind so unfavourably.

Mr. M.-No one seems inclined to contemplate the grant to Maynooth in other light than that of a sop to Cerberus. As to any compact, Mr. Lord, in his able work, has entirely knocked the idea on the head. He first starved the reptile, by depriving it of any nutritious argument, and then, putting the moral heel of his powerful mind on its head, I distinctly heard its bones crack.

The D.-You are metaphorical, florid, and figurative. But tropes are not arguments.

Mr. M.-Mere tropes, my Lord Duke, like mere puns, are the rheumatism of language, but they have yet their value as illustrations. One of the great objections I have to the series in question is their isolation, or, as my friend Hartwell Horne would say, insulation (for he detests French words). They stand alone in the statute-book; they have no moral or political connection, either with what they follow or with what they precede; they are as much in place as a poetical quotation in a treatise on the differential calculus, or an algebraic formula in my "Luther" or "Satan."

The D.— As I never read your 66 Luther," or any other of your works, and never shall, I am hardly able to judge of the aptness of your present illustration; nor, indeed, do I see that any inference can be deduced from it.

Mr. M.-Yes, my Lord Duke, the political acts of a great nation should have a magnificent moral consistency. They may, indeed, be on different subjects and directed to different immediate ends; but the final object should be the improvement, at once physical and spiritual, of the people. They should be like the men in a grenadier regiment, all of the same stature (I speak of their intellectual size). And as to the little crooked monster, the vile abortion, the contemptible dwarf-expediency, why do you not, you, who are one of the Anakim, knock it down with the but end of your old cannon-law arguments?

The D.-Insulation may be only apparent; and there is more connection between recent acts than you, perhaps, are aware of.

Mr. M.-So much the worse. I was in hopes that this measuré was a great political interjection. Something like the Duke of York's Column, which is a great Tory interjection; it looks an "auroxov," as αυτόχθων,” though, by itself, it sprang out of the earth, threw up the duke at the top, and exclaimed, "O!"

The D.-I must be at the Horse Guards in half an hour; and as I have a book full of similes, written or collected by somebody or other, I need not detain you.

Mr. M.-Now, my Lord Duke, let me ask you if you expect that Repeal agitation will be given up, because you grant a permanent increase of £17,000 per annum to a Jesuit college?

The D.-I never said that it would.