and the generation to follow us will enter into moral responsibilities towards society and towards God far exceeding ours. For that which seemed only a tendency a little while ago in society to dissolve its religious elements, now is on the eve of active dissolution, or rather the process has already set in. The Catholic religion alone is "the salt of the earth;" and every Catholic is bound to scatter that "salt." And social, political, professional, intellectual, moral power are all of immense avail, where the mind and will have been thoroughly imbued with the truths and precepts which Christ teaches, hic et nunc, through His Vicar and Church on earth.

How shall we overcome the sluggish unwillingness in which we are immersed? How shall we vanquish the temptation to fritter away the prime of life in doing nothing? How shall we kindle a new flame in the bosom of our sons, and turn their life to the profit of their country and to the honour of their name?

We repeat it in a country such as ours the Catholic nobility and gentry hold a double responsibility, arising out of their social position and out of their creed. Though we may forget it, there is One who will not forget.

Now, without passing any judgment as to the justness of these somewhat severe reflections of Paterfamilias, we hold it our duty to present the true apology for this old-world, shy, retiring character of our Catholic families as regards public life.

They have suffered long years of banishment for that faith which was more precious to them than gold or the favour of the world. They have been pariahs and outcasts from public life. After a man has been in prison or in shackles all his days, he scarcely knows how to use his new sense of liberty when set free. It is so with families. It is not forty years since the Catholic disabilities and penal laws were abolished. The moral effect of them, like an atmosphere, lingered in and about the old ancestral hall, impregnating, as it were, the saloons and passages, the study, even the very nurseries and all the curious old haunts. The father was shy, unversed in public life, and had no distinct precepts on this point to instil into the mind of his son; and so the son grew up like the father. But this excuse, we admit, is getting a little old; an atmosphere does not petrify and remain for ever: new currents sweep round and carry it away.

We believe, then, that the master-reason of our stagnation, as men of public service, is to be traced directly to our want of University education. We shall pursue this conviction presently, after we have rapidly surveyed the thoughts of the

professional man, who has to complete the education of his son, and is tempted by the real or fancied promises of Oxford. It is a frequent and growing case. It is a parent who belongs to that intelligent and energetic class which is the nerve and sinew of our body politic; he exercises his honourable profession, and by dint of perseverance, honesty, and intelligence, he rises above the average. He has given his boy the best education he can find in one of our colleges. He has watched his growth with love and anxiety; he has planned many a scheme for his future success in life. Immersed as he is in his own profession, the business of life has assumed, perhaps, an inordinate importance in his eyes; this life has been more present to him than the future; he has never himself studied the philosophy of religion, nor keenly realized the vital value of Catholic doctrine and tradition; he had not himself been educated amid the influences of a national Protestant and rationalistic University; the questions discussed in his youth were not the questions of to-day. He takes a rapid survey of his own experience; he only half knows himself, because he only half sees the standard he might have attained; he calculates for his son the value of knowledge, education, prestige, and connection; he has heard Oxford men talk much about Oxford. He has understood it to be a password to success; he knows University education, with its friction and attrition Oxford and Cambridge-the two of mind, to be good.. great seminaries of the Protestant clergy-split, divided, and tormented with doubt, heresy, and rationalism, have opened their gates to a flood; the antiquated test of the Thirty-nine Articles is laid on a shelf; Jews, Quakers, Wesleyans, Dissenters, Rationalists, and Catholics are all invited to enter, and are made welcome. Filled with parental love and interest, and dwelling overmuch upon the worldly prospects of his son, he determines to accept the invitation, and to send him to Oxford. The parents say to one another, "We have done the best that we could for him hitherto; we have built him up with every care; in two or three years more the ship will leave the dock and put to sea without us; let us spare no expense then now, let us spare nothing to complete the outfit for the doubtful voyage of life. Let us send him for three years to Oxford."

Now, with each of the classes, that of the unprofessional and that of the professional man, whose claims to a University education we have thus briefly considered, we have a profound sympathy. Man is born to labour, whoever he may be: then teach him, and let him labour: God so wills it. Let him, neither lead the life of a drone if he is in affluence, nor sink

among the dregs if he enters a profession. These are days for the Catholic to take his part in public life: the field is open to him: if he enters the race, why should he not win it?

But let it ever be borne in mind that we are sent into the world upon a more ennobling mission than a scheming policy after a name or earthly gain; and that the key to this mission, the guarantee to its success, and to our reward, is in our being Catholics, faithful as the needle to the pole, true as steel, tempered through and through in the genuine Catholic spirit.

We have just now attributed the backwardness of some of our Catholic nobility and gentry in entering into the public business of the country, and their marked inferiority in this respect to their Protestant neighbours, to a want of immediate education and preparation for it. The same holds good with regard to our professional men, though, of course, in a very much less degree.

Let us explain our meaning. The only educational establishments we possess in England are our colleges. In past years our system of education naturally accommodated itself to the circumstances of the time: during the long night of the penal laws we got what education we could, at home and abroad; and learnt "in our patience to endure:" when these became relaxed, we built up our colleges at home. Sedgeley first, then Old Hall, then Stonyhurst, then Ushaw.* They were founded as schools. They admit boys as young as ten or eight; their ordinary course is seven or eight years; their system, for the most part, is directed and proportioned to boyhood. They were founded before the paths of public life in England were open to Catholics as now. They do not, therefore, lead a youth up to public life, and initiate him into it, as the national Universities do. When a boy has finished his college course, he is still a boy; he has associated with boys during seven or eight years, boyish as himself, and as heedless of the future. Contact with these will add nothing to him. Then, the rough and hardy life, the very inno

:

* Sedgeley Park was founded by Bishop Challoner in 1763. Old Hall Green Academy dates from 1769. Edmund, Bishop Douglas brought down to it the first arrival of Douai In 1793, Nov. 16th, the Feast of S. students and Philosophy and Theology classes were forthwith opened under old Douai Professors. In 1794 those of the Douai Students, who belonged to the Northern District, left Old Hall for Crook Hall, Ushaw, where they opened their studies on the Feast of S. Teresa. Stonyhurst was given to the Society by Thos. Weld, of Lulworth; and Aug. 27th, 1794, F. Stone, the last Rector of the College at Liége, opened Stonyhurst college.

them to Oxford, have alleged as their excuse their perplexity to know what to do with them during the three or four critical years of life. They have said that to keep them at home in idleness is ruin to them; to send them abroad to travel for three or four years has great drawbacks; to put them into a profession is what they cannot do; and to prolong their boyhood in college is impossible. And then, feeling strongly all that we have described in a former page they ventured upon a step which the Church has now formally disapproved.

The appreciation of a higher education, the aspiration after it, the efforts to attain it, are not local or sectarian, but are common to the whole country and to our day. It has been said—and there is a truth in it-that boys are snapped up into business, and men must enter young into professions, so as not to give their equals an unfair start: but statistics prove that University education is on the increase too; and that intellectual cultivation, which is its produce, is in the market, and obtains its price. This pervading desire for education is like a gentle breeze at sea, springing up of an evening on a little fleet of sail, which has laid still the whole day. It catches first one craft and then another, filling this sail and then that, until all the canvas is spread and the whole fleet is borne along, down wind, in one direction, towards the port. It began with the century, in the famous Lancastrian discussions and efforts in behalf of popular education; it took hold of the half-deadened Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which were quickened by the application of the sharp knife of the Scottish utilitarian literati: then a "Committee of Privy Council on Education" was called into existence in the year 1838; then the whole of the Public School system received a new impulse from Dr. Arnold; finally, Royal Commissions were appointed to sit upon the Public Schools, and also upon the University of Oxford. And now these Universities are throwing off their religious character, and pretending to direct and educate the mind of the whole empire. But in the face of these pretensions, seven other Universities have been founded during this century, - Durham, London, Queen's, Sydney, Toronto, Quebec, and the Catholic University in Dublin.

The Catholic community was carried along by the same wind; the industry which worked under the penal laws was quickened after 1829: the Poor School Committee combined with the Privy Council in 1847. Our colleges partook in the movement they increased in number; their students multiplied; they affiliated themselves to the London University to obtain degrees, and they excel in the examinations. Now the clergy feel a want of purely ecclesiastical education, and