Roman Catholic
Church into fashion; to make it the sensation of the hour; to do for it
what Irving did for Presbyterianism when he drew around him to the Scotch
Church in Hatton Garden all the beauty, the fashion, the genius, the
intellect of his day.

The ordinary public service of a Roman Catholic Church requires little
description; nor do you see it here as you do, for instance, in the
magnificent cathedral of Antwerp, where, in the dim dusk of an autumn
eve, while a flood of music floats down from the choir, and the gorgeous
priests, with tapers and incense and costly banners, are sweeping, dimly
seen, along the fretted aisles, the writer has often felt there is a
strange, weird effect produced, which, here you can never dream of. All
is poor, something like a theatre by daylight, or a fancy ball when the
delusions of gas have been dispelled by the too candid and impartial rays
of the sun. There are the tapers and the usual processions, the
vestments of various colours, and the music ever flowing, while at the
altar end the priests are bowing and kneeling and scattering incense, and
performing the service of the mass. If you have to listen to a sermon,
it will not be a long one; and if you be a Protestant, it will strike you
as verbose in style and un-English in tone. Nearest to the altar will be
the upper ten thousand, who come in broughams, and have fashionable
aspirations. At the other end will be the very poor, such poor as you
see nowhere else, scarcely educated enough to count, as they do on their
knees, their beads, and certainly not competent to intelligent
appreciation of the service. Of course the people kneel to the altar and
cross themselves as they come in, and join in the worship with an
appearance of piety (I mean the elder ones--young ladies who have eyes
will use them, whether they be saints or sinners), which is pretty well
for such an undemonstrative people as ourselves, but is nothing to that
of the Moslem, who plumps on his knees, regardless of all, exclaiming
_Allah hu akbar_! as the Muezzin calls to prayer.

On the Continent it fares ill with the Papacy. In France--in Italy--in
Austria--even in Spain it has lost its power. Its chief strength at this
time seems to consist in the sayings and doings of an increasing section
of the Church of England. It appears there is a society actually in
existence to form a union with Rome, and Mr. Malet, the Vicar of Ardley,
in Hertfordshire, was l