cclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome
while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's
Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San
Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I
walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long
vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of
Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a
portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of
open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and
indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction
of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during
the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793.

Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually
go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the
most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and
of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter
written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a
tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter.
In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan
of Campaign on this property.

"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not
at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from
persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do?
I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting
agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and
necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice
to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and
families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in
these most distressing circumstances."

"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The
rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only
in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism,
is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out
of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at
the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for
tears!"

He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he
has promised to send me lette