their position, they are not infrequently heard to desiderate the systematic training of their Romanist rival. No doubt in point of general culture they are much superior to the average priest: one can often recognise the priest who has entered the sanctuary in a maturer age after secession from Anglicanism by that impalpable ‘culture’ which is the characteristic gift of our English Universities.
How it happens in praxi that the Catholic educational system produces such equivocal results will appear subsequently; in theory it is admirably constructed for the attainment of the ecclesiastical aim. Instead of merely adding a few lectures on current theological squabbles or patristic research to an ordinary liberal education, it takes the boy of thirteen or fourteen and arranges his whole curriculum up to the age of twenty-four, with a direct relation to his sacerdotal ministry. The course of training thus extends over a period of ten or eleven years under direct ecclesiastical control. The boy is handed over by his parents and transferred to the seminary or to a preparatory college in connection with it, where his education is at once undertaken by clerics. All the larger dioceses have their own seminaries, though at the present moment a warm controversy exists as to the advisability of amalgamation or continued separation.
The scheme is divided broadly, according to universal ecclesiastical usage, into three sections.
