One of the most eminent of the Oxford men who
followed Dr. Newman into the Roman Catholic Church, and also into the Order of St. Philip Neri, the Rev. J. B. Dalgairns, died last week, of an ill- ness which has now lasted nearly two years. He was a man of singular eloquence, as well as fervour and piety, and one of the small though increasing number of Roman Catholics who tried to understand and appreciate truly all the various forms of modern Scepticism. He studied Professor Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer as carefully as he studied Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, and could generally state the precise shade of his opponent's philosophical creed. Such men, though they are increasing in number among Roman Catholics, are still but few, and it would be well for the cause of mutual religious understanding between the different Churches if they were not so few. Father Dalgairns is a link lost between a Church which knows little of English- men, and of which Englishmen know less, and the great body of the nation.
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