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Church Politics and Church Prospects.

to the prodigious practical difficulties environing the notion. The general complexion of the body was, in its more spiritual aspect, that of an Association, organized in 1857, of members of the English, Roman, and Greek Churches, and numbering, so it is asserted, 7,099 members, bound to unite in certain prayers for unity, with an apparent understanding among the clergy to preach occasionally in aid of the same end. Its mundane machinery was the establishment of a periodical, entitled the Union Review, with the double object of being simply a High Church Anglican and Conservative Organ, and also a channel for the communications of the Unionists of all communions. It has been written with considerable cleverness, although its double intention has made it somewhat unworkable. As was natural, a periodical conducted on such principles proved a godsend to a class whose lips were otherwise padlocked, the discontented, or disappointed Roman Catholics—mauvais coucheurs—who had lost the Home and Foreign Review, and who were sure of being refused admission to the ordinary run either of Romanist or Protestant periodicals. Of communications from such writers the most remarkable was a long paper with the unfortunate and unworthy title of 'Experiences of a 'Vert' [i.e. convert or pervert) which has, from internal evidence, been publicly and without contradiction, attributed to Mr. Ffoulkes, formerly B.D. and Fellow of Jesus' College, Oxford, author of the 'Counter Theory,' in reply to, though several years later than. Dr. Newman's 'Essay on Development,' and now a married man in lay Roman communion. It is needless for us to epitomise this paper, which has been reproduced at great length in the Guardian. Its practical summing up was a 'rehabilitation' of the English Church, and a dissuasion from individual secession. Its publication led to a result for which the Association was strangely unprepared. Hitherto it had gone on in the conviction that 'the Association has been approved in the highest Ecclesiastical quarters, both among Latins, Anglicans, and Greeks. The Holy Father gave his blessing to the scheme when first started, and repeated that blessing with a direct and kindly commendation to one of the English Secretaries who was more recently granted the honour of a special interview.' So, too, we are told that the Ex-Patriarch of Constantinople had done the like. This statement regarding the Pope was subsequent to the event which we have to record, and has been confirmed by Mr. Kugee, who has declared himself the person who heard the Pope so speak. No doubt Pius IX., who is, as all know, both kindly and courteous, not to say gushing in his manners, and thoroughly ignorant of English matters, would be very likely to give his blessing off-hand to a body of which all he