lace,
much has been done already. The true Helbeck type is fast
disappearing, buried or lost in inaccessible places like the fells of
Westmoreland, or Breton castles, far from the highway of humanity's
daily life. Had not Mrs. Ward reminded us of him, we should have
almost forgotten his existence. The modern spirit, of which Laura is
the type, has steadily eliminated the species.

Next, though Roman Catholicism occupies a far different position from
that it held in the days when Yorkshire and Lancashire were plentifully
studded with houses and homes such as Bannisdale, it must be remembered
that the successors of the sixteenth century Helbecks are only _magni
nomines umbra_. To the modern Catholic, religion is less than ever a
life to be lived, a distinct type to be created; it is increasingly
recognised merely as a creed to be believed. Helbeck of Bannisdale you
could pick out of a crowd, but a congregation at the Oratory or Farm
Street differs in nothing from one at St. Peter's, Eaton Square, or the
smartest Congregational chapel. They all mingle indistinguishably in
the "church parade" and are lost.

It is the victory of the "world" overcoming "faith".

The modern Catholic believes with the Church as against the world, in
the importance of "orders" or the truth of transubstantiation and
infallibility, but his life is with the world. Emphatically, his
_conversation_ is not in heaven. He is one of us. He is like
Nicodemus, a disciple in secret, for various reasons, of which he is
probably utterly unconscious. His Catholicism no more alienates him
from modern life than Wallace's profound belief in phrenology puts him
beyond the pale of science. His differences with the modern world are
purely speculative, having little or no bearing on practical life, and
therefore the world is content to take Catholicism at its own
valuation. How far this is from Helbeck one can easily divine, but
Laura has brought them leagues from that Westmoreland home of
impossible ideals and all it symbolises.

At the same time, no one need look for the disappearance of that
speculative system known as modern Catholicism. The type, the life
indeed has gone, and gone for ever; but there will always be a "crowd
which no man can number," who prefer to sit and submit to being up and
doing for themselves. Reason and authority must ever continue to be
the watchwords of the two great sections into which humanity is divided
on the relig