he is the editor. Three volumes of the second edition are finished and the fourth is in course of publication. Some interesting and learned papers were also read in the historical and philosophical section. An Atheist's Funeral.-The late Professor Virchow was publicly known to be an atheist. He was, nevertheless, honored with an imposing church funeral. A prominent Protestant minister, arrayed in full ecclesiastical ornaments, preached his funeral sermon, expressing the hope that the deceased might pass from earthly to heavenly immortality, to the father of spirits, the fountain-head of light and truth, and the cathedral choir sang the hymn: "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." A colleague of the unctuous minister, writing to a Protestant paper, indignantly protests against this prostitution of the services of the Church on behalf of one who had declared that in the numberless bodies he had dissected he had never discovered a soul; who in the Reichstag had protested against the belief in a future heaven as irreconcilable with modern science. A leading paper of the Socialists makes this sarcastic comment: "Among the 'Liberal' gentlemen who stood around Virchow's bier there were but few who in religious matters do not hold the same opinions that he held. But for appearance' sake all the pomp of the Church must be displayed at the atheist's funeral. If at least the Church could have found courage by a vigorous rebuke to bring home to Liberalism its innermost hollowness!" ENGLAND. The Catholic Conference.-For their numbers, our Catholic brethren in England are doing splendid work. One of their excellent means of action is the annual conference of the Truth Society, which, as the Bishop of Clifton, Dr. Burton, said in his sermon in St. Mary's, kindles enthusiasm and guides and fixes Catholic opinion. The Conference this year was at Newport, a city which, until 1809, had no Catholic church. The famine of '48 drove across the channel the faithful Irish, and the Catholic population now numbers about 8,000. In twenty years £30,000 ($150,000) have been contributed for Catholic schools. In preparation for the Conference, there were special services in the churches of Newport on Sunday, September 14. Preaching at St. Mary's, the Bishop of Clifton said the Conference assembled in order, by an interchange of views of clergy and laity, to deliver the message of the Church, "whose uncompromising outspokenness made her a wonder and a reproach to many. Her credo was a credo of religious, educational and social life of the highest order." In a letter regretting his inability to be present, Cardinal Vaughan pleaded for the boys and girls in the schools-" the strength, the hope and the population of the future"-urging that they be brought into the Catholic Truth movement by reading and distributing the publications, contributing small sums "for their own little depot of C tholic Truth papers." The inaugural address was by the Bishop of Newport, Dr. Hedley. Within twenty-five years, he said, every one has come to be a reader, and men are made, "morally, socially, politically and religiously by what they read." Our only hope is in a moral press, "to keep our people from nourishing their hearts and souls on destructive food." Let us give them "the best in matter and form" -"a first-rate Catholic journal will be ubiquitous." Dr. Hedley pointed out the waste of Catholic talent and the facility with which Catholic enthusiasm and organization should spread Catholic literature. Do they make use of as they should, and counteract when necessary, the press, "so terribly important an element in human civilization and morality?" Father Gerard, S.J., treated "the irreligious difficulty"-the spirit of irreligion "threatening to smuggle itself in under the shadow of education." If positive religious teaching be eliminated, religion becomes a matter of emotion or sentiment; and if there be no fixed canon of truth and morality to guide human faith and life -nothing to shape conduct higher than the mere utilitarian enactments of human law, what resistance can be offered to an active infidel propaganda? For the aggressive infidel nothing is sacred. His gospel is "science," i. e., only physical science, that of the laboratory and the dissecting-room. Father Gerard dwelt on the deliberate and active efforts-greater and more general than is imagined to spread "scientific" infidelity even in schools, and to corrupt youth by "an abominable propaganda" of immoral literature and art. Premising that the late Professor Huxley was one of the most fitting representatives of the so-called scientific school of unbeliefa school which acknowledged, as he did, that "our great antagonist is the Roman Catholic Church, the one great spiritual organization which is able to resist "-Father Gerard skilfully showed that "the wonderful researches and discoveries of modern science only enhanced the force of the lessons which nature teaches us concerning the author from whom she has derived her existence and her powers; the arguments of the infidels, even on their own showing, not touching the points at issue at all; or, in other words, acknowledging the utter inability to account for the most fundamental mysteries. The papers read at the Conference dealt with the great practical questions of the day for English Catholics-the needs of the grammar schools; the emigration of children to Canada; the School Bill; the relations between the rich and poor, and the care of the latter; the objects and work of the Catholic Truth Society, and of its branch, St. Teilo's Society, for the publication of books and pamphlets in Welsh. The Conference ended in a pilgrimage to Tintern Abbey. The Education Bill.-" We expect a stout fight, a conclusive victory for the government, and then a short period of apathy," said the Spectator (September 20). "It is curious, and a little melancholy," it adds, that amidst all this hubbub the interest felt in education for itself does not increase in proportion to the debating about it. Not even the interest of a political crisis can induce the average Englishman to study the bill, or form any but the vaguest opinion upon the innumerable plans for improving education everyday submitted to him." The non-Conformist opposition is very determined. The Congregational Union of Glasgow have resolved to destroy the bill or refuse to pay rates. The Baptists imitate them. Three County Councils and several Town Councils have gone with them, also. All this bluster, however, is neither new nor extraordinary. The opposition cannot force a dissolution of Parliament, and the ministry are determined to carry their bill. Sir John Gorst, one of the greatest authorities on English educational measures, has come out stanchly for the justice of the bill. The Spectator (October 4), remarks that if the religious schools were forcibly sold, the cost would be £100,000,000 ($500,000,000). Some Facts about the Schools.-According to the Annual Report of the Board of Education, there are under government inspection in England 20,116 public elementary schools; of which, 14,319 are voluntary or religious, and 5,797 Board Schools. There are 3,054,709 children in the religious, and 2,703,434 in the non-religious Board Schools. Each child costs annually £3 ($15) in the Board, 2. 6.8% in the Voluntary Schools. The cost of maintenance contributed by the rates to the Board Schools is £1.8.2 per child; but the Voluntary Schools must get on with free contributions amounting to £o. 6. 8. per child. Their merit grant, however, i. e., the reward, of actual school-work is higher than that of the Board Schools. The adult certificated teachers in both classes of schools are trained in the same colleges and pass the same examinations; but the head-master of a Board School gets for his annual salary £170. 10. G while his brother of the Voluntary School receives £127. 12. 8. If we compare the school apparatus, etc., of the two classes, the Voluntary Schools are poor indeed. Restraint of the Liquor Traffic.-In Surrey an attempt has been made by the Justices to limit the excessive sale of intoxicants. Appeals were first made to the brewers and other proprietors, but to no purpose. Then the Justices refused licenses, and the Surrey Court of Quarter Sessions sustained them in nearly all the cases appealed. The example is likely to be followed. An official report on the state of things is being made in Hampshire. The brewers there have expressed their willingness to come to an agreement with the Justices. In twenty towns of Hampshire there is a licensed place for selling liquors for every 154 inhabitants; and in forty country parishes, one to every 120. The Protestant Alliance and the Assumptionists.-English commonsense has administered another rebuke to the religious mania of the French ministry. The Protestant Alliance, having failed against the Jesuits, determined to have the exiled French Fathers of the Assumption expelled from England. The Fathers are few and labor amongst the very poor in Bethnal Green, London. Being foreign and unpopular, they seemed to be easy victims. But the English Courts refused the summons; and the exiles continue their work amongst the abandoned and the needy. A Religious Craze.-At Clapton, in north-eastern London, a Rev. Smyth Pigott, formerly a Church of England curate, and later of the Salvation Army, proclaims himself to be the Messiah. He was unknown until he made this announcement. He calls his followers Agapemonites, or dwellers in the abode of love. Judgment, he avers, is at hand; and it is now the time for praise, not prayer. Thousands crowd to see, or hear him, mostly through curiosity. He is protected from bodily harm by a strong force of policemen. The advent of this fanatic recalls that of another, like him, thirty-six years ago, in Kent. He was a very tall, muscular man, and wore a coat of mail. Many, and not from amongst the poorer people, were attracted by him. His wild discourses inflamed his followers to riot. Some Recent Controversy.-A Mr. Roberts, in a communication to the Athenæum, stated that there was on exhibition in one of the London book-stores a copy of Pope Leo X's Bull, relating to the building of St. Peter's, Rome, and "condoning every conceivable sin at a price, save the one deadly wickedness of priest-beating." Father Gerard, S. J., looked the matter up, found that the document was not a Papal Bull at all; that there was in it "nothing remotely resembling a tariff of prices; ""nowhere any list of sins, with terms for their forgiveness;" but, for gaining the indulgence referred to, were prescribed, besides contrition and confession, the visitation of a church and the giving of alms. A Protestant Bishop and an Encyclopaedia.-The Month justly condemns the Bishop of Ripon's article, "On the Christian Church," in the new Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. For him, all sects are" the Church of Christ;" yet he dexterously "blots out almost entirely the influence of the Catholic Church," in his attempt to describe the progress of Christian history. His statistics are "most surprising." He finds-extraordinary discovery-that, for the last 400 years or so, Christians are much more numerous than they were before; and this, apparently, owing to Protestantism; although there have been few Protestant converts from paganism, and, for the most of the time, absolutely none: the Protestant "duty of intercession" for missions began in 1875, although the Bishop forgets to say so. He finds that there are just now 120,000,000 persons under Greek governments, 242,000,000 under Catholic governments, and 520,000,000 under Protestant governments, without saying what are the relative numbers of professing Greeks, Catholics and Protestants. Of a like character is his "statistical measure of Christian energy "-meaning missions -from which all Catholic "energy" is omitted. ITALY. Death of Father David Albertario.-The valiant director of the Osservatore Cattolico of Milan, died on the 21st of September, at the age of fifty-six. His health had been broken by the two years of prison to which he had been most unjustly condemned after the Socialist riots in Milan, in 1898. For thirty years he had fought in the press the battle of the Papacy. He died at Carenno, where the Alps begin to ascend, and whither he had gone to restore his shattered constitution. Here his apostolic spirit could not rest, and he preached to the mountain peasants the truths he had so long defended with his pen. "He had served God with magnificent generosity" is the tribute of an associate of the press. "The whole truth of religious doctrine, the sovereign rights of the Church, the sacred claims of the lowly and afflicted-in these was his apostolate summed up." His sectarian adversaries were forced to respect him; and when denounced by his own, he neither bent nor retorted. When imprisoned and unable to say Mass, because he |