Which is nevertheless surely the fact:--and the only real question is whether St. Radagune's mansion and the Earl of Guildford's are both to be farm-houses, or whether the state of things at the time of the Dover Catechism may not be exactly reversed,--and St. Radagune have her mansion and park railed in again, while the Earl's walls shelter the cows on windy days. For indeed, from the midst of the tumult and distress of nations, fallen wholly Godless and lordless, perhaps the first possibility of redemption may be by cloistered companies, vowed once more to the service of a divine Master, and to the reverence of His saints. You were shocked, I suppose, by my catalogue, in last Fors, of such persons, as to be revered by our own Company. But have you ever seriously considered what a really vital question it is to you whether St. Paul and St. Pancras, (not that I know myself at this moment, who St. Pancras was,--but I'll find out for next Fors,)--St. George and St. Giles, St. Bridget and St. Helen, are really only to become the sponsors of City parishes, or whether you mean still to render them any gratitude as the first teachers of what used to be called civilization; nay, whether there may not even be, irrespective of what we now call civilization--namely, coals and meat at famine prices,--some manner of holy living and dying, of lifting holy hands without wrath, and sinking to blessed sleep without fear, of which these persons, however vaguely remembered, have yet been the best patterns the world has shown us. Don't think that I want to make Roman Catholics of you, or to make anything of you, except honest people. But as for the vulgar and insolent Evangelical notion, that one should not care for the Saints,--nor pray to them,--Mercy on us!--do the poor wretches fancy that God wouldn't be thankful if they would pray to anybody, for what it was right they should have; or that He is piqued, forsooth, if one thinks His servants can help us sometimes, in our paltry needs. "But they are dead, and cannot help us, nor hear!" Alas; perchance--no. What would I not give to be so much a heretic as to believe the Dead could hear!--but are there no living Saints, then, who can help you? Sir C. Dilke, or Mr. Beales, for instance? and if you don't believe there are any parks or monas abiding for you in heaven, may you not pull down some park railings here, and--hold public meetings in them, of a Paradisiacal character?