Finally, it is worth while to put in a word in favour of an effort to keep the church open all day. The importance of this practice has been emphasised not only in our own Synods of Westminster, [7] but also in the new Codex, [8] which orders it for at least several hours each day. With us there are sometimes difficulties in the way, especially when the presbytery is at a distance from the church. Sometimes, however, these difficulties are unduly magnified. Even the danger of occasionally losing a few shillings from the collection boxes would seem to be not too great a price for satisfying the devotion of so many who long to visit the Blessed Sacrament from time to time. A Catholic church should have as its characteristic that it is _alive_; and even when no service is going on, the daily life of the church shows itself. Time was, and not so many years ago, when a church left open would run the risk of being maliciously desecrated: and that is probably in part at least responsible for the bad tradition in some of our churches in this respect; but it is to be hoped that we have got past that danger by now. [1] That is, not as a rule. In the days of the so-called "shilling opera" at Warwick Street, some of the Italian type of masses were in vogue. [2] As an extreme example of the opposite spirit and the decay of liturgical sense may be quoted that of a church a few years ago on Palm Sunday, which fell that year on March 16, the only music being at the distribution of the Palms, when the people sang the hymn "Glorious St. Patrick." On another occasion at quite a large church, one Maundy Thursday, falling that year a few days after March 19, and within the supposed Octave of St. Joseph, when we came hoping to find _Tenebræ_, instead there were popular devotions before the statue of St. Joseph, which in consequence of Passiontide, was covered with a purple veil, but had lights burning before it. [3] About half a century earlier a system of English psalm-singing was introduced by some of the gentry in their chapels. Owing to the nature of its origin--for it was at a time when the laity were in opposition to their Bishops and adopted the name "Cisalpines"--these English psalms did not at that time receive Episcopal sanction; but they were not forbidden, and were in use in some chapels down to comparatively modern times. In the home of Cardinal Vaughan at Courtfield, in Herefordshire, they were in regular use. In his youth he learnt to love them, and when Bishop of Salford he introduced something similar in his Cathedral, with considerable success; and the experiment was copied elsewhere. When he came to London as Archbishop, he tried to introduce them there; but they were not taken up, and are now rarely heard anywhere. Nevertheless, the "Come let us adore"--an adaptation of the _Venite exultemus_--found its way into the Manual of Prayers and has thus secured a permanent place among our devotional exercises.