But when we examine the tables more in detail, we see that in both sections the ratio of Catholics varies greatly in different states. It is easy to account for this difference in the South. Six states only have any considerable number of Catholic inhabitants. Louisiana and Missouri owe them to the old French colonies around which the Catholic settlers clustered. In New Mexico, more than three-fourths of the people are of Spanish-Mexican origin. Texas derives a great number of her inhabitants from Mexico, and has received a large Catholic emigration both from Europe and from the United States. Maryland, the germ of the American Church, owes her religious prosperity to the first English Catholic settlers; and the Church in Kentucky is an offshoot of that in Maryland. Such are the special causes of the great differences between the churches of the various Southern states. In the North there is less disparity. European immigration has produced a much more decided effect in this section than in the preceding. From this source come most of the faithful of New York, Oregon, California, Ohio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the Germans have done the principal part, and they have done much also in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The effect of conversions is more perceptible in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York than elsewhere. In many of the states, however, and especially in Pennsylvania, we find numerous descendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French colonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern part of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their ramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in which the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several interesting points touching the laws which have determined the direction of the principal development of the Church, and which will probably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may call three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably stronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern section, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an aggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and Kentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern states. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and Kentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the ancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania--good old Catholic communities, in which the zeal and piety of the faithful possess that firm and decided character which comes of long practice and time-honored traditions. It contains, too, the magnificent seminary of