nations would be able and willing to afford’?” To dispose of the indictment first, we may quote a little further from the author of it. He writes: “So far as they are individually concerned, they [the priests] are in many cases the true friends of the people. They help them in their affairs, settle their disputes, claim for them their rights, comfort them in their sorrows, admonish, encourage, cherish and watch over them. This is at the best. At the worst they are hard and cruel, selfish and unjust, over-eating and over-drinking—a grotesque and monstrous company. But these are the minority; and on the whole the priests perform the duties of a dreary life as well as could be expected of a narrow and half-educated class of men.” Now, if this means anything at all it means that the person responsible for it believes that the Catholic priesthood of Ireland is socially useful and necessary. The minority of its members are “hard and cruel, selfish and unjust,” which is true of the minority in other priesthoods besides the Irish. But the majority “are the true friends of the people, helping them in their affairs, settling their disputes, claiming for them their rights, comforting them in their sorrows, admonishing, encouraging, cherishing and watching over them.” How the majority manages to accomplish so much, if it is composed of a “narrow and half-educated class of men,” passes comprehension; but we have the fact that it manages it, which is satisfactory. Further, our friend omits, in the plenitude of his deprecation, to mention that the “religious vocation” in Ireland is by no means the softest, easiest and rosiest of vocations, amounting, indeed, to a species of spiritual and physical servitude of the severest kind; and that the religious Orders, so far as they may be represented in “monasteries and nunneries,” are self-supporting, subsisting austerely on the labor of their own hands, and devoting themselves to the most arduous charitable and educational work without fee or reward. And as to “indecently rich” houses of the Church, such an epithet as applied to the Catholic churches of Ireland is quite preposterous. There is no “indecently rich” Catholic church in all Ireland. That there are Protestant churches with incomes amounting to a comfortable number of hundreds per annum and not half a dozen souls in the way of a _bona-fide_ congregation may be granted; but the Catholic church with as little as £100 a year and no congregation does not exist. Neither can it be maintained that the Irish Catholic churches are “indecently rich” in the matters of architecture or adornment—the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, gorgeous windows, splendid altars and vessels, or other elaborate fitments, being the exception and not the rule. Indeed, our author himself complains that “the ugliness of the churches in Ireland is revolting to the healthy sense,” and that the “decorations” which “enshrine the mysteries of the Mass” are “cheap” and “hideous,” so that