- Of public events,-in this flattest of seasons, the most
prominent has been the meeting of the Financial and Parliamentary Reform Association ; and quietists are delighted to cry that it also was flat to the last degree. Doubtless, it was not greatly redeemed from flatness, even by the somewhat boisterous intervention of Mr. Fe,argiia O'Connor. The very principle and spirit of the Associa- tion involve that consequence. It'is an attempt to effect a com- promise between Liberal-Ministerialism and Chartism: too restless to stand still; it is discountenanced by all steady Whigs ; too slow to move with the people, it is suspected by all ardent Chartists ; not gaining ground with either, it lacks the confidence even of middle-class empiries. Its Speakers touch upon topics some of 'which are rising in public interest, but it is only a timid tonoh- end-go. The leading men are bound by the social compact a it's. existence to abate their own tongues to the proper medium sense s their eloquence is self-converging in d gradual diminuendo, until at last they seem fairly to have established that 'which alarms no- body—an organized mediocrity. There is more stir in the Church Union, although nobody knows well what it is about, since it is rather veiled than disclosed to the bile view. The total effect, however, is that certain persona at 1 have left the Union on account of forbearance shown to the imputed -Itomanism of others ; that Dr. Puseru4oundly rebuk- ing the seceders for a needless aggression, c es them with the responsibility of having forced a schism which would not otherwise have existed; and that the general sense of the Union seems to go with.Dr.'Pusey. In the cours7lof his denunciation, he made a personal declaratiqn of some public interest—that he ' means to die in. the Church of England. : Even more public stir has been made'—perhaps for want of other subjects exciting enough—about the new encroachment on the part of Rome, in creating an "Archbishop of 'Westminster." More importance is attached to the step than it deserves. It is true.that the law forbids' the Bishops of the Roman Church( to nssunie the titles of sees ; but in Ireland they have-been alleired-to suffer. the public to nickname them with such titles, and even in England outlandish substitutes for real territorial names have been endured. We cannot feel either fright or a very profound indignation, al- though Lord Arundel and Surrey and other highly speculative- Romanists may have an eye to the Abbey, as they are said to have to York Minster ; nay, we learn without affright, through the Berlin wool trade, that Romanistic embroidery is multiplying in the na- tional churches. But a certain indecorum, in encroaching upon the tibdern toleration of Great Britain, and in appointing an Archbishop over a district eminently Protestant and not at all Romanist, is not to be denied. Perhaps the apparent extension is not without its dangers to the very party which may take it for success. There is no doubt that the Papacy is thoroughly decayed at its centre ; that in ' X the Antis ,feu.ogi 210, /*cutting a national: ; Lthe,,Anal 'f the Pontifieste is now manifestly a .questiOn of time alone. The extension a the Romanist connexion, therefore, at its outer borders, helps to expedite the process of dis- integration. The more so, as the Roman Church may probably follow others, in not thoroughly breaking up, but in becoming im- bued with a kew spirit, which shall operate as a gradual conver- sion. Thati poem is already at work, more actively than the yery imperfect overt sign of Giobertism would suffice to indicate; i and n the outskirts of the connexion, where its opinion comes in contact with the theological and spiritual discussion of the times, the process of conversion is likely to take effect, not only indi- vidually but still More collectively. The Anglo-ltomenists of Westminster are as little like the orthodox Romanists of the Vati- can as they are to the strict Itomanists of Smithfield. The por- tents of the Berlin wool trade and the titular sallies of the Sacred Colleg)ejare trifles compared to these graver and larger phamomena the progress of the world is not to be arrested by coloured worsted or verbal audacities.
