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Church is God's work; and it is plain that God, strictly speaking, stands in no need of man's aid to accomplish his work. However, saving always in the case of miraculous interposition, which can be considered only as a splendid exception in the order of Providence, it is certain that God makes use of secondary causes to accomplish the end He has in view. Now, confining ourselves to the ordinary way by which the Church is led, we do not hesitate to say that the co-operation of good and faithful laymen is always necessary in France; and can this be matter of doubt, when we remember that, humanly speaking, all its interests are canvassed, and its destinies discussed and decided, in those very assemblies in which the clergy have no seat, and in quarters which their remonstrances can barely reach, or reach only to be disregarded?

Now, whenever a layman's silence or inaction would lend a tacit encouragement to the progress of evil, it is no longer his right only, but it is his sacred duty, to speak and act; by holding his peace he would become a prevaricator-he might even incur the guilt of an accomplice; and when the ruin of religion in a great kingdom is the matter at stake, such connivance is a tremendous sin even in the sight of men, much more before God.

[Extracted from the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, September 1850.]

KATE GEAREY; OR, IRISH LIFE IN LONDON.

CHAPTER I. The "Gracians."

It was on a bright spring day in the year 1849, the very zenith of a London season, that a group of trampers, or 66 Gracians" (as the Irish themselves style them), were congregated at the mouth of one of the courts in the western end of London. The mouth of this same court, or buildings as it was termed, opened into a short fashionable street, forming a communication between Oxford Street and Square: the court itself was not ten doors from the square, yet probably not one of the inhabitants of the latter had ever even bestowed a furtive glance on the dismal-looking passage, where so many hundreds of their fellow-creatures were immured. The court bore, and still bears a bad name, and as such is known to many; yet I

have been repeatedly asked by those whose avocations call them daily through the street, where it can possibly be situated. Its mouth, however, yawned between a first-rate butcher's shop and a splendid pastry-cook's. The locality suited the butcher well enough, inasmuch as his slaughter-houses-(he killed on the premises)-ran down the said Buildings; but what took the pastry-cook there I never could guess. There is his shop, however, and there it was two years ago, in all the glory of barleysugar temples, wedding-cakes, bath-buns, and tarts, on which the poor ragged urchins would gaze by the hour together, wondering if any lady or gentleman would throw them a bit, and envying in their hunger the pampered spaniels who were feeding on the dainties within. An omnibus approaches; the whole group is in motion, performing most extraordinary evolutions with their arms and legs, under the noses of the horses, for the entertainment of city men, who occasionally reward these human windmills with a halfpenny. I never yet, however, heard that any of these halfpence found their way into the splendid shop; the sight of the middle-aged lady with the smart cap, and the young lady with the showy necklace and no cap at all, drive the fortunate possessors of the halfpence to old Norry, the sweet-stuff woman, who sits at the corner of the square on a broken stool, her feet in an old apple-basket, which on a wet day answers all the hydropathic purposes of a cold bath.

Norry's fingers are continually busy arranging her stock, "jist to keep her hand in for the customers." Poor old Norry! I see her now, with her unwashed face, a red cotton handkerchief tied under her chin, her ragged blue petticoat, and the thin shawl pinned across her breast, wistfully watching for buyers. Norry's brandy-balls and sugar shoulders of mutton have, however, no attractions for yon group of youthful aristocrats, who, in short muslin petticoats, flounced polkas, and enormous hats with huge cockades and long streamers, are wending their ways to the Park, under the escort of a pompous-looking nurse, a coquettish young lady with sandaled shoes, lace veil, reticule, and parasol, who by courtesy is designated a nurse-maid, and a meek-looking nursery governess, who brings up the rear and leads the poodle. As to the children of the neighbours, they had rarely ready cash, so they wheedled and teazed the old woman to give them credit; and their names would be still on poor Norry's books, had she left any such documents behind her. Norry rented a back cellar at No. 3. in the Buildings. It had once been used as a receptacle for mortar, and could boast neither flooring nor window. The substitute for the latter was a square hole looking into a damp filthy passage (for Norry's abode was some feet beneath the

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level of the yard), which admitted both light and air; the latter must have been of a remarkably pure quality, as the old lady's "opposite neighbour" was a large public dusthole. There the greengrocer in the parlour threw his stale vegetables, which were allowed to rot in company with soap-suds, and other and more odoriferous compounds more easily imagined than described. As every one used the dust-hole, of course it was no one's business to empty it; and there it remained, forming a steep bank between the back and the front "kitchen." Norry's bed was of a peculiar description. She was subject to rheumatism; and a bedstead was an unknown luxury to most of the inhabitants of the Buildings. "But what did the like of her want wid a doore? She had nothing to lose, barring the sweet-stuff," and that she'd put under her head. So the door was taken off its hinges, laid on the ground, and did double service; on it during the day did Norry squat à la Turc, for it served at once for divan and table; and at night it formed an illigant" couch, her attire sleeping and waking being generally the same. An old rug sufficed for bedding; but Norry liked her head high; so, after arranging her sweet-stuff on one end of the door, she turned a basket over it, placed another on that, and laid her down to rest.

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For twelve years had the old dame paid one shilling and threepence per week for this subterraneous palace. At length, a party of rats, disturbed from a neighbouring cesspool, took it into their heads to favour her by nocturnal visits. "They gnawed the ould cloak;" Norry was frightened, and took a lodger. Jim Casey was a widower of seventy-two; Norry White a widow of sixty-nine. "So the neybours couldn't talk, any how." Yet I must confess I was rather surprised a few months afterwards, just before the commencement of my story, to find Norry White metamorphosed into Mrs. Casey. Her reasons (when did an Irishwoman want them?) were sufficiently prudential. "He had a fine sackful of straw for the bed; I had the doore and the covering; sure wasn't it betther to mak a jint consarn of it; and now that he's in the 'house' with the asthma, haven't I it all to meeself?" And then, accordingly, Mrs. Casey, as the "rint" was heavy, busied herself looking out for another lodger.

It was, then, a fine spring afternoon, and old Norry sat at her stall, not looking out for customers,-that she knew was useless, but listlessly gazing at the splendid equipages which rattled past, or with a more lively interest watching the proceedings of the "Gracians," as one by one they disappeared within the precincts of the Buildings; the more fortunate claimed by "a boy from their own parts," the remainder having struck

a bargain for six foot by three of the flooring of a back garret, for present accommodation, for which by the by they were to pay about a third of the actual rent of a room which already contained three families.

"Good marning, Missis Toomey," ejaculated Norry, as a tall raw-boned termagant, a moving stack of filth, with a sickly infant in her arms and two barefooted urchins clinging to her ragged gown, sauntered towards her. "How do you find yourself this fine evenin, marm?"

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"Carn't be worse, Mrs. Casey! carn't be worse, marm,' answered the Amazon, whose eyes bore the visible marks of a pugilistic encounter, and whose breath was strongly redolent of beer and tobacco. "God help the like on us! Here's Mickey, the baste, says I'm dhrunk; so he up wid his fist, the dirty spalpeen, and giv me these two black eyes; and what'll I say whin guverness calls to-morrow about the childer?"

"Whew! does guverness call if the children don't attind riglar like? I thought she lift all that to the clargy and Miss Bradshawe."

"I don't mane our own Catholic guverness of the Buildings," said Mrs. Toomey, looking as if she would blush if she could, and gnawing the corner of a very dirty apron; "but you see the winter was like to be a very savare one; Mickey spint more than he earnt at the corner there," pointing in the direction of a large public-house; "so the district ladies said they'd pay Murray's score if so be I'd send the childer to the ragged school in the Hollow."

What'll they larn there?" inquired Norry drily.

"The Scripters, I'm tould," answered Mrs. Toomey. "Murray's a bitther Prodistant, you know; I did not like to be hobligated to the likes of him, and I got a few tickets for soup and coals, so what's the harm done? The childer will soon unlarn all they've larnt there, ownly they'll miss the pinnies anyhow." "Miss the pinnies!" inquired Norry; "what is it you mane by that?"

"Why, you see, the ladies found out that being ould Catherlies like, the parents didn't choose the childer to say ony prayers but their own; and whin the min tuk the pledge, and Easter cuming too, they scolded the likes of me for silling our religion, and not for a bellyful aither, jist as if it wasn't all make-belief for the winther; so they dopted a plan to giv the childer a pinny when they cum unknownt, an it'll be hard to break them of it anyhow."

God be betune us and harm!" ejaculated Mrs. Casey, crossing herself devoutly, for with all her faults the old woman was a strict and well-living Catholic. She had lift the dhrink

many's the long year; and for the cursing, what good ever came on it? Did it ever make the pot bile or kindle the sticks? It angered God, and the ripribate talk kept all the good people from the coort, and deprived the likes of her of many a little comfort which her own ladies would bring her. "God be betune us and harm! Peg Toomey," repeated the old woman sternly; "it's not what I expict from the like of you. Your mother cumm'd from the same place as meeself; Ĭ remimber her whin she wore a feather in her high-crowned hat on a Sunday, and rinted a house at thirty-five pounds a year; before you were born, Peg. She died in disthress in this counthry, the crather; but she never sent her childer to a Prodistant school, and that's what your childer won't be able to say any how."

To any one else, Mrs. Toomey's reply would have been. peculiarly adapted to the neighbourhood of which she figured as one of the most distinguished orators; but, half-drunk as she was, she had a sort of respect for old Norry; so shaking the poor infant until it was black in the face, and then heartily cuffing the dirty little imps at her heels for making it cry, she lounged away, muttering to herself and snarling at all whom she encountered. Mrs. Toomey's abode being a back parlour some six foot square, she banged the door with dignified violence, let the infant slip from her lap on the hearth, where it found a solace in the embraces of an old kettle, and sank into a slumber, from which she was aroused by the return of her husband from his smoking club, tired and cross. Over the scene which followed we draw a veil; suffice it, Peggy's black eyes were no better in the morning, and Mickey appeared with a deep cut across the forehead, tradition says inflicted by the broken candlestick.

Old Norry gazed after her for a moment or two in silence, then busied herself gathering together her traps, giving vent, as she did so, to such disjointed sentences as the following: "Well, it's a sorry sight! A dacent woman's child too. Ah well! whin they neglict the duty, all goes; she'll niver comb grey hairs any how."

At the mouth of the Buildings Mrs. Casey paused, as if to inhale a parting breath of comparatively pure air, when contrasted with that of the gloomy narrow vista into which she was about to plunge; but Norry was used to it, "didn't mind it any how," and turned to depart, when her attention was. arrested by a deep-drawn sigh. Looking in the direction of the sound, she observed a slight youthful figure leaning against the rails of the pastry-cook's, and a pair of large blue eyes fixed wistfully on the old woman's dirty but not repulsive face. An exclamation of surprise and pity burst from the lips

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