* their churches and homes because they would not take an unlawful oath imposed by the state, they were exiled and imprisoned and slaughtered; the walls of the Carmes and the waters of the Loire, were reddened with their blood; while their places were filled by apostate priests and schismatic bishops, who yet claimed to be Catholic. Outlawed by the government, persecuted by the people excited to frenzy against them, and disgraced by the vices of the court clergy of Louis XV., which were reflected on the whole body, where should they look for aid? They appealed to the Vicar of Christ; he was in exile and in prison; yet from exile and from prison came forth the sentence, which pronounced them to be the true church of France. The voice of Peter denounced the constitutional clergy as schismatics; and though upheld by the temporal power, all the faithful of France rejected their ministry, and cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church the founders of that establishment outlived their work; whilst the exile into which they were driven but served to show more clearly by the unanimity with which they were received that the non-juring clergy of France were the true Catholics; as well as to put in the clearest light the bond of communion which unites all Catholics in one sheepfold under one shepherd. Before we conclude this article, we must say a few words on the edition of Ricci's Life now before us. It professes to be an abridgment of, or rather selections from, the work of M. De Potter, edited by a Mr. Roscoe. We have already alluded to the reasons which were calculated to render the work what is called a taking one at the present time, and which have manifestly guided the editor's hand in what to omit and what to retain. De Potter's is the work of a strong partisan; but in its English guise, it loses every claim to fairness. The original has the fault of containing, amid many idle reports on the authority of anonymous correspondents, pieces of valuable cotemporary history. In the English version the history disappears, whilst all the gossip is retained. De Potter has the fault of being discursive and unconnected; but in the English edition there is no attempt at a consecutive history; and we would defy the ablest analyser, otherwise un *See Barruel's "Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Jacobinisme, and Histoire du Clergé." acquainted with the subject, to compile from it a clear chronological chart of Ricci's life. Thus, only to mention one instance, the last chapter of the first volume closes the proceedings of the assembly of bishops in Florence; while the first chapter of the second volume without any explanation, opens with an account of Ricci's changes in his diocese and the synod of Pistoia; events which preceded those detailed in the preceding volume by nearly two years! In the same manner all the events from the accession of Leopold to the imperial throne, in 1790 to 1803, when Maria Louisa was regent, are passed over without a word; whilst the accounts of the murder of De Basseville at Rome and the revolutions there, given by De Potter in appendices, are strangely mingled up in the narrative, if narrative it may be called, with unconnected extracts of letters from Ricci's numerous though not very eminent correspondents, the whole forming one ART. III.-1. A Narrative of Five Years at St. Saviour's, Leeds. Br THE REV. JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN, M. A., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Whittaker & Co., 1851. 2. The Statement of the Clergy of St. Saviour's, Leeds, in reference to the recent proceedings against them. Masters, 1851. 3. A Letter to the Parishioners of St. Saviour's, Leeds. BY THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF RIPON. With an Appendix of Documents. Rivingtons, 1851. 4. A Letter to the Parishioners of St. Saviour's, with Remarks on some Statements in the Bishop of Ripon's Letter. BY THE AUTHOR OF 'A NARRATIVE,' &c. Whittaker, 1851. IT is with mixed feelings, and such as we can scarcely analyse even to our own satisfaction, that we have risen from the perusal of the above works, and especially of that which stands first in the above catalogue, and forms the groundwork, as it were, of the rest. It is written, not by one of the St. Saviour's clergy themselves, but by one who, from his position, is almost more competent to undertake the task, as having been less directly concerned in the matters which he relates, or, at least, as not having borne in them throughout a protagonistic part. From time to time the clergy of St. Saviour's, Leeds, had Mr. Pollen with them, as their guest, for the purpose of receiving his temporary assistance and succour in the many difficulties with which they had incessantly to cope; and when absent, he seems to have kept up a constant interest in all their proceedings, and an intimate acquaintance with the labourers themselves. Few persons, then, could be found better qualified to estimate at their right value, all the transactions connected with St. Saviour's, from the day of its consecration in the autumn of 1845, down to what we must be allowed to to call its "fall," at the close of the year 1850. Most of our Catholic readers, we imagine, are already aware, that "St. Saviour's, Leeds," was an attempt to draw out into practice what by very many persons are supposed to be the real, though latent, powers and principles of the Anglican Church. It was clearly intended by Dr. Pusey, and by those who built that edifice with him, to make a trial there as to how far this hidden mind of their "Church" could be actually realised and brought out to the surface and into open day, as a fact patent to the eyes of the world. They were naturally sick of that unreality of which they could not but at times feel inly conscious, when they compared the theoretic abstract church about which they wrote, with that in which they saw themselves placed, for which they daily toiled, and in which alone they trusted to live and die. How could it possibly be otherwise? Upon the pages of their Prayer Books they saw disjointed portions of Catholic truth scattered here and there, the relliquiæ melioris ævi ;" and as they could not fail to see also their exceeding brightness, when compared with the dreary waste around them, in which these fragments shone forth, like precious stones upon a sandy shore, what wonder that their first and foremost thought, their most eager hope, should have been one day to work these parts together, and blend them, if possible, into a consistent whole? For, by so doing, they could best give the lie to those who, for three centuries, had pointed to the Anglican Church as an useless, lifeless piece of lumber, and had never spared to throw in its teeth, as an unanswerable argument against any divine claims which its members might put forth, the utter impotence of its system to produce anything in the way-we do not say of the divine and supernatural life, but of real, consistent, and sustained self-sacrifice and devotion. We cannot wonder, then, that minds which had been led by God's grace to grasp eagerly on these detached fragments of the Catholic Faith, should have set themselves earnestly to work, in order to ascertain whether they could not combine them into some system of Catholic practice, which should give due scope to enthusiasm in works of mercy, charity, mortification, and self-denial. "If the Church of England at heart be Catholic," they argued, "she can produce Catholic fruits in her outward life, provided she have only free scope and play: but she is undoubtedly Catholic: therefore, under God's blessing, it is only our own efforts that are needed in order to accomplish this end; and if we are but true to her, she will shine forth hereafter to the world in her own true light and glory, a pure branch of the one Holy Catholic Church which is the spouse and the body of Christ. Who knows but that on us at this moment may be depending the continued life and existence of the Church, and that the sentence may not soon go forth against her from the Lord of the vineyard, if she remain barren of good works?" Such words, we firmly believe, would not have done injustice, some six or seven years since, to the sentiments and feelings of those excellent persons by whose exertions, (after all preliminary difficulties with the bishop were removed,) the first stone of St. Saviour's Church was laid, and the building itself made ready for consecration in 1845. It may be difficult for our Catholic readers to realize to themselves the fact that such thoughts and hopes were ever cherished by any body of religionists external to the Church, at least in their sound senses; but still so it was. Let us hear what Mr. Pollen himself confesses upon the subject: "The working of St. Saviour's was an attempt to give a practical solution to questions of inexpressible interest to some of us at the present time. In the divided condition of the Church of England, it seems clear enough which party is in power, and has the preponderance of numbers on its side; but that the other has most to say for itself on paper, is confessed by the cry of their opponents for alterations in the Prayer Book............That those points of doctrine which were brought into dispute at St. Saviour's touching the sacramental system, formed a portion, and a very important and indispensable portion, of the Catholic deposit, is of course the conviction of the writer, as it was of his friends. Therefore, to vindicate to the Church of England, and to each of her members, a full right to every gift and privilege which accompany that deposit...... would obviously be felt a duty by Tractarians,' as God gave them the grace and opportunity to do so. "St. Saviour's was an humble attempt to carry out this conviction, and to give a practical refutation to those who doubted whether the Church of England could satisfy the longings of those amongst her children who yearned after the deeper and more unearthly gifts which the Holy Ghost brought down upon the Apostolic body. It was just to set disputers to work. Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee mine by my works,' is a fair practical argument. It is loyal and constant to try to wipe off that reproach of a modern historian, that the Church of England never has had the power to use enthusiasm, or those words of one whose sentences rarely failed to pierce the hearers' heart,...... 'O my mother,' he cries, whence is this unto thee, to be strange to thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel towards thy little ones? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, who love thee, and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear, as though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence ;-at best thou dost but endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession, and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayest. Thou makest them stand all the day idle,' as the very condition of thy bearing with them; or thou biddest them begone where they will be more welcome, or thou sellest them for nought to the stranger that passes by." (Pref. pp. ix-xi.) St. Saviour's Church, then, was confessedly and essentially an experiment, an attempt to innovate upon the existing state of things in the Anglican Communion, and to produce something higher and more spiritual, but still more practical also, in the way of feeding and satisfying ardent souls, than had hitherto been realized in England for three long centuries. Thus much is admitted even by Mr. Pollen, the warm-hearted friend and apologist, from first to last, of the work and of the workers at St. Saviour's. We do not see how he can well admit thus much, and yet not see at the same time, that this experimental effort to introduce new blood into an effete and useless system, or, (if the simile be deemed more suitable,) to" pour new wine into old bottles," involved in itself a practical condemnation of the existing Church's system and action, as manifested during the three last centuries, and a confession that |