tions. If these duties have not been always understood, at least
the _Home and Foreign Review_ will not betray them; and the cause it has
imperfectly expounded can be more efficiently served in future by means
which will neither weaken the position of authority nor depend for their
influence on its approval.

If, as I have heard, but now am scarcely anxious to believe, there are
those, both in the communion of the Church and out of it, who have found
comfort in the existence of this _Review_, and have watched its straight
short course with hopeful interest, trusting it as a sign that the
knowledge deposited in their minds by study, and transformed by
conscience into inviolable convictions, was not only tolerated among
Catholics, but might be reasonably held to be of the very essence of
their system; who were willing to accept its principles as a possible
solution of the difficulties they saw in Catholicism, and were even
prepared to make its fate the touchstone of the real spirit of our
hierarchy; or who deemed that while it lasted it promised them some
immunity from the overwhelming pressure of uniformity, some safeguard
against resistance to the growth of knowledge and of freedom, and some
protection for themselves, since, however weak its influence as an
auxiliary, it would, by its position, encounter the first shock, and so
divert from others the censures which they apprehended; who have found a
welcome encouragement in its confidence, a satisfaction in its sincerity
when they shrank from revealing their own thoughts, or a salutary
restraint when its moderation failed to satisfy their ardour; whom, not
being Catholics, it has induced to think less hardly of the Church, or,
being Catholics, has bound more strongly to her;--to all these I would
say that the principles it has upheld will not die with it, but will
find their destined advocates, and triumph in their appointed time. From
the beginning of the Church it has been a law of her nature, that the
truths which eventually proved themselves the legitimate products of her
doctrine, have had to make their slow way upwards through a phalanx of
hostile habits and traditions, and to be rescued, not only from open
enemies, but also from friendly hands that were not worthy to defend
them. It is right that in every arduous enterprise some one who stakes
no influence on the issue should make the first essay, whilst the true
champions, like the Triarii of the Roman legions, a