uer."

Nor again can Mrs. Jameson's English honesty avoid an occasional slip
of delicate sarcasm; for instance, in the story of St. Filomena, a
brand-new saint, whose discovery at Rome, in 1802, produced there an
excitement which we should suspect was very much wanted, which we
recommend to all our readers as an instance of the state into which
the virtues of honesty and common sense seem to have fallen in the
Eternal City--of humbugs.

No doubt there are many such cases of imposture among the list of
saints and martyrs; yet, granting all which have been exposed, and
more, there still remains a list of authentic stories, sadder and
stranger than any romance of man's invention, to read which without
deep sympathy and admiration our hearts must be callous or bigoted
indeed. As Mrs. Jameson herself well says (vol. ii. p. 137):

When in the daily service of our Church we repeat these words of the
sublime hymn ("The noble army of martyrs praise Thee!"), I wonder
sometimes whether it be with a full appreciation of their meaning?
whether we do really reflect on all that this noble army of martyrs
has conquered for us? Did they indeed glorify God through their
courage, and seal their faith in their Redeemer with their blood?
And if it be so, how is it that we Christians have learned to look
coldly upon the effigies of those who sowed the seed of the harvest
which we have reaped?--Sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum! We may
admit that the reverence paid to them in former days was unreasonable
and excessive; that credulity and ignorance have in many instances
falsified the actions imputed to them; that enthusiasm has magnified
their numbers beyond all belief; that when the communion with martyrs
was associated with the presence of their material remains, the
passion for relics led to a thousand abuses, and the belief in their
intercession to a thousand superstitions. But why, in uprooting the
false, uproot also the beautiful and the true?

Thoroughly and practically convinced as we are of the truth of these
words, it gave us some pain when, in the work of a very worthy
person, "The Church in the Catacombs," by Dr. Maitland (not the
author of "The Dark Ages"), we found, as far as we could perceive, a
wish "to advance the Protestant cause," by throwing general doubt on
the old martyrologies and their monuments in the Roman catacombs. If
we shall have judged hastily, we shall be ready to apologise. None,
as we have s