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Rome's Recruits.

Third List.

The number of new names of converts to Catholicism forwarded to us during the past week makes it advisable to give to-day a third and entirely fresh list, and to postpone for a week or two the publication of the promised pamphlet, which will contain, we may safely assert, a more correct and complete catalogue of Rome's Recruits than any that has yet appeared in print, or, indeed, than any that exists in the private archives of the Propaganda. The public interest aroused when the subject was first mooted in our columns still continues to find expression in the letters and papers, which come to us by every post. "By thousands of Roman Catholics," writes a correspondent, "the articles have been fully appreciated;" and one, as we learn from another source, was read out on Sunday from the altar of an Irish chapel. We must again reiterate that we made no pretension to completeness for either of the lists already published; though, touching this point, we might, perhaps, complain of the carlessness of several newspapers, the Freeman's Journal and the Universe among the rest, which omitted the first fifty names of our first catalogue, while professing to reprint it in its entirety. Our own shortcomings were, however, admittedly numerous, and if we are able to atone for them it is mainly owing to the kindness of the correspondents who have added or corrected names. A doubt which we confess to having at first entertained as to the propriety of giving publicity to a spiritual change of which the world took little note, has proved, we are glad to say, to be without foundation. On the contrary, publicity has been courted with a frankness which speaks well for the constancy, the self-respect and even enthusiasm of the proselytes. One, indeed, an Oxford Master of Arts and an ex-incumbent, in forwarding his name, makes a gentle remonstrance against his non-appear ance on what he, of course, considers a roll-call of honor:—"No case," he declares, "is more worthy of insertion than my own, for I gave up all, and have suffered fearfully for conscience sake." We suppose a sin of commission is commonly a more serious thing, theologically, than a sin of omission, and it is obviously so in the case of our list. Such is naturally and emphatically the opinion of the Rev. N. W. Willis, M.A., Vicar of All Saints', 'Wellingborough, who writes, "with a feeling of just indignation," to say that the insertion of his name among the "perverts" is "unjust and cruel," as well as "most damaging to the character, work, influence, and interests of a clergyman of the Church of England." Of course we are very sorry; but we hope that as time goes on Mr. Willis will be a little less serious over the error, arising from some confusion of names, or, possibly, from the clumsy—though hardly, we should have thought, malicious— page 27 joke, which someone has seen fit to play by forwarding his name, with every show of authenticity, for publication where it is evidently altogether out of place. We have also to regret a confusion which led to the incorrect insertion of the name of the Honourable Mrs Mostyn, As regards the classification of the list, we have followed a simple, but not rigid, alphabetical order, which certainly commends itself much more to our judgment than any system of arrangement founded on rules of social precedence and distinction such as is suggested by a correspondent of the Weekly Register, who, "for the glory of God and the edification of the faithful," would give the list under such headings as "Nobles, esquires, clergymen," &c., a method which would prove both offensive and confusing.

At a time when the spirit of religious inquiry is abroad, and when theological controversy is conducted with so much candour, it naturally happens that a large number of our readers, confronted for the first time with evidence of so extensive a change of faith on the part of their countrymen, should express curiosity, not only as to the motive of the conversions, but as to their effect on the individual character of those concerned. The remarks of some of our convert correspondents bear on the latter point. "I do not regret the change out of doubt into certainty," writes an Oxford man, "although," he adds in common with scores of others "the experiment has not paid in the matter of money." Another Oxford man, formerly a Cornish clergyman, writes :—

"I will venture to say that many among; us would willingly give not only all their worldly goods but their lives also could they thus prove their love for their brethren left behind. I would indeed. For ourselves we only say thankfully with the Psalmist, ' Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowier; the snare is broken and we are delivered.' "

The same tone pervades the letters of a great number of others, and all may be summed up in the words of the illustrious man whose name is on the lips of Protestants and Catholics alike, and who was the mainspring of that Anglo-Catholic Movement which has led him where he is:—

"From the day I became a Catholic to this day (writes Dr. Newman) I have never had a moment's misgiving that the Communion of Rome is that Church which the Apostles set up at Pentecost, which alone has the 'adoption of sons,' and the glory, and the covenants, and the revealed law, and the service of God and the promises, and in which the Anglican Communion, whatever its merits and demerits, whatever the great excellence of individuals in it, has, as such, no part. Nor have I ever for a moment hesitated in my conviction, since 1845, that it was my clear duty to join the Catholic Church, as I did then join it, which in my own conscience I felt to be Divine; and never for a moment have I wished myself back; never have I ceased to thank my Maker for His mercy in enabling me to make the great change, and never has He let me fell forsaken by Him, or in distress or any kind of religious trouble."

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A certain number of reversions no doubt there are. Mr. J. M. Capes, a gentleman of literary taste, has been to "Rome and Back," and, after the manner of the "Amateur Casual," has written a book about it. Mr. Husband, having long played with candles and incense, at length seriously apprenticed himself for some weeks or months to that Church in which candles and incense, though prominent features of a public service, are, after all, we are told, nothing more than the merest accessories, or at most symbols, to the initiated; and Mr. Husband also went away sorrowful to practice in a Protestant Church the latest developments of Ritualism. Mr. Ffoulkes has discovered that Charlemagne and one of his Pontifical contemporaries made some remarks to each other of which he, Mr. Ffoulkes, entirely disapproves, and he too has retired, like Achilles, to his tent. And there is a moral as well as a mental cause for reversions to which reference must be made. A story is told of a certain priest who called one day on his Bishop to confess that he had troubles as to some point of doctrine, and that he had made up his mind to leave the Roman Communium "because—because—well, because he had a scruple." To which the Bishop, a man of shrewd worldly sense, replied by laconically inquiring: What is her name?" In other words, petticoats play a prominent part in religious as in most other controversies; and we find that Mr. Suffield and one or two others who left Anglicanism to take Orders in the Roman Communion, and who have since disappeared from the firmament where they shone with more or less brilliancy, so contrived their fall that they landed on terra firma not altogether lonely, nor without loudly expressing their pity for those who, in the words of old Isaac Disraeli, have "eluded the individual tenderness of the female."

Next week we shall publish a fourth and concluding list. It was intended to reproduce the whole of the names in a supplement the The Whitehall Review; but the additions to the original list are so large that we have resolved, in compliance with a very general wish, to reprint the four lists and the accompanying articles in a pamplet, due notice of the publication of which will be given.