PRIESTS AND CATHOLICS OF THE OLDER GENERATION.
(TO TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIE,—Years ago, when I was a curate of Kensington, and enjoyed the advantage of frequent intercourse with its vicar, the late Archdeacon John Sinclair, I heard him tell a story of his father, who, on his way home from London to Scot- land, stayed the night at the house of a Roman Catholic gentleman in Yorkshire. The Archdeacon's father spoke to his host of the violent agitation which was then going on respecting the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, and was surprised to find that that measure met with but scant approbation and with no enthusiastic support from his friend. Shortly afterwards, after one glass of wine after dinner, the Chaplain, a Roman priest, left the table, and the host immediately said No! We Catholics of the older generation do not care so very much about this Bill. We do not want those fellows," he continued, pointing to the doorway through which the priest had just quitted the room, "to get too much the upper hand, and we foresee that this is what they will do when this Bill is passed. It is of great importance to keep the priest in his proper place!" The Archdeacon, who was a man of very varied experience and endowed with a good deal of "the historic sense," used to dwell upon this story of his father's as an instructive indication of the feelings often entertained towards the priest in many great Catholic houses in the early years of this century. If this really is so, there is clearly a substratum of fact in Mrs. Humphry Ward's romance, and in that very part of her book in which she is said to exhibit "a shameless ignorance."—I am, Sir, &c., HENRY Fo °Trail?, Vicar of Nocton, and Canon of Lincoln.
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