ewspaper press, daily and weekly, teems
with articles upon the subject, and pamphlets have been issued by
several of the most eminent dignitaries of both the Catholic and the
Established Churches. The Government has been driven to take part in the
war of words, and a letter from the Premier, Lord JOHN RUSSELL, to the
Bishop of Durham, has been published, in which the proceedings of the
Pope are severely censured, and contemptuous expressions are used
concerning the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic worship. The newly
appointed Cardinal WISEMAN, has issued an able, elaborate, and temperate
"Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People," against
the violent clamor by which he and his church have been assailed. This
paper seeks to vindicate the proceeding of the Pope from censure, by
showing that there is nothing in it inconsistent, in any way, with
loyalty to the English government, as the only authority sought to be
exercised is spiritual and voluntary. The letter of the Premier is very
closely analyzed, and sharp reference is made to the complaints made by
the Chapter of Westminster, of his assuming the Archiepiscopal title. He
proposes a "fair division" of the two different parts embraced in
Westminster proper. One comprises the stately Abbey, with its adjacent
palaces and royal parks: this he does not covet: to it "the duties of
the Dean and Chapter are mainly confined, and they shall range there
undisturbed." He looks for his field of labor to another quarter. "Close
under the Abbey of Westminster," he says, "there lie concealed
labyrinths of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums, nests of
ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor,
wretchedness, and disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation
is cholera; in which swarms a huge and almost countless population, in
great measure, nominally at least, Catholic; haunts of filth, which no
sewerage committee can reach--dark corners, which no lighting board can
brighten. This is the part of Westminster which alone I covet, and which
I shall be glad to claim and visit, as a blessed pasture in which sheep
of holy Church are to be tended, in which a bishop's godly work has to
be done, of consoling, converting, and preserving;" and if the wealth of
the Abbey is to remain stagnant and not diffusive, he trusts there will
be no jealousy of one who, by whatever name, is willing to make the
latter his care without interfering with the former