religion! It is a common cry that the Catholic body are poor,—but it is false: the bishops are poor, the clergy are poor, the masses of town population are poor; but there is wealth yet in possession of men who have not altogether renounced the name, although they have the practice of Catholics (if the world and Satan did not grasp their hands), to restore religion throughout England, and to place it in such a position as to be a beacon and a light to all. What, then, must be the black despair of one of these men, when the world to whom he has sacrificed all is passing away from him for ever! His gay companions of the turf who have cheated him, and fattened on his rents and lands, have left him to die alone,—not one of these jovial friends are there. A few mercenary attendants hover round, to watch the last, and divide what they may. No chapel or chaplain: the priest has long been driven out to live on a distant portion of the property; the old chapel is a disused garret, where a few moth-eaten office-books and unstrung beads tell of the departed piety of the older members of the family. But many years have elapsed since holy rites or holy men were there seen or heard. Stupified with disease, the wretched owner of a vast estate, childless and deserted, draws near his end. He has wasted a life which might have been one of usefulness and honour. He has impaired a property which was ample enough to have enabled him to have placed the religion of his fathers on a noble footing; he might have founded missions, established schools, encouraged his tenants, and been the means of bringing numerous souls to God. But he has done nothing—he has got nothing, but the whitening bones of some racers that cost him thousands, lost him thousands, and were shot in an adjoining paddock, and stocks of empty bottles, consumed in entertaining worthless associates, and a broken constitution now bearing him to a premature end. It is over. He is no more. Unrepentant, unshriven, unanealed, his spirit has gone to judgment. No ministers of God, no rites of holy church, were there to exhort and strengthen the departing soul. There was not one of all those mighty consolations which the church has provided for dying Christians and their survivors. No stoled priests kneel around in prayer and supplication; no ardent lights show forth the glorious hope of resurrection; no poor bedesmen receive the funeral dole, and cry, "May God have mercy on him!" no solemn knell invites the departing prayer; the chamber of death is close and still: the Protestant undertaker encloses the festering corpse in costly coffins, hideous in form and covered with plated devices, but not one Christian emblem among them all; a huge pile of sable feathers, as if in mockery, surmounts the whole; and thus it stands, till, in a few days, it is committed to moulder in the old vault. Placed on the north side of an old parish church that had been built for Catholic rites, but now