The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-09 00:00:00

On the 2d of September, 1860, he writes :

" I am not awakened from my illusions, because I have
never indulged in illusions. What we now see must have
happened when once Italy was left to herself ; and, though
the leaders of that country appear to me to conduct badly
the affairs of its nationality and its liberty, I still am per-
suaded that the final result will be the conferation of Italy,
a new settlement of the temporal domain of the Papacy,
and the downfall of despotism and demagogy. This is my
firm belief, because God is above men, and greater than
they are."

And again, in October, 1861, he says :
" What passes in Italy will be the supreme struggle be-
tween the revolutionary and the constitutional parties.
There is so much confusion in the plans of the Powers that
it is impossible to say how soon the solution will come. But
I still think that Italy will escape from the grasp of Aus-
tria ; that the Pope will recover a sufficient part of his
States ; mid that the future will be better than the past,
both for the temporal and the spiritual."

Father Lacordaire visited London and Oxford in
March, 1852, and he thus recounts his impressions

"It was yesterday, on my return to Landon, that I re-
ceived your letter, with a good many others that were wait-
ing for me for ten days. I spent those ten days in visiting
many noble objects. In the first place, two of our convents,
one at Hinckley, a small town in Leicestershire, the other
at Leicester; then a baronial mansion, where I received
hospitality ; the Cistercian Convent, called Mount St.
Bernard; Alton Towers, belonging to Lord Shrewsbury;
the Church of Cheadle, a convent of Passi nists close by,
the city of Birmingham, and lastly Mary's College,
Oscott. All this, which tells you little, has told me much in
the wonderful development of the Catholic Church in Eng-
land. You can form no notion of the magnificence of these
establishments, and of the beauty of the site ; nor of all
that there is of touching in this resuscitation of the works
and the acts of faith on an heretical soil. This, you are
told, is a church built by a converted minister; that
monastery has been erected in a solitude by a private gen-
tleman; yonder chapel on the rock contains an image
of the passion of Our Lord, and Protestants themselves
come to it to sing canticles, and this cross is the first that
has appeared on the highway for three centuries. After ten
days spent in this way, I am come alone to Oxford to rest
myself, and to write in tranquillity to those I love. How
calm and beautiful is Oxford I Fancy, in a plain, surrounded
by uplands, and bathed by two rivers, a mass of monu-
ments, Gothic and Greek; churches, colleges, quadrangles
porticoes, all distributed profusely, but most gracefully, in
quiet streets, terminating in trees and meadows. All
those buildings, consecrated to letters and science, have
their gates open. The stranger enters as he would enter his
own home, because they are the asylums of the beautiful
to all who are endowed with feeling. As you traverse these
noiseless quadrangles you meet here and there with young
men in cap and gown, but no crowding, no din. There is a
solemnity in the very atmosphere, as on walls darkened by
ages, for it seems to me that nothing here is repaired, for
fear of committing a crime against antiquity ; and yet you
have the most exquisite neatness in all these buildings,
from the base to the summit. I have nowhere seen such
an appearance of ruin with so much of preservation. In Italy
the buildings breathe of youth. In Oxford it is Time which
shows itself, but Time without decay, and with all its
majesty. The town itself is small, but even this does not
take from the grandeur of the place ; the monuments
serve for houses, and give it an air of vastness. How I
longed to h.ve you by me as I wandered alone among
those young men of your own age ! Not one
of them knew me, nor cared to know. For them I
was as though I did not exist ; and more than once tears
crept to my eyes when I thought that elsewhere I should
have met the faces of friends 1 London has magnificent
quarters, but otherwise a great and gloomy uniformity, an
atmosphere full of smoke, and an unmeaning immensity,
which deprives of grace what is well terminated. Its popu-
lation, though full of life, ill conceals deep misery. Nothing
appears grander than this people in their institutions.
nothing meaner in the appearance of their streets. . .
London is vast, and po sesses very noble quarters, but
in many respects seems to be inferior to Paris. Vast-
ness itself, when it is, as it were, unlimited, detracts
from beauty; it is but a mass of houses without end,
without harmony, unconnected, and these houses being in
a cold line and all of the same fashion, as in the greater
part of London, their immensity is like a weight that op-
presses you without imparting pleasure to mind or body.
The finer part of London is in a quarter which is vast
without being overwhelming, and where palaces, parks,
spacious streets, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Par-
liament, and the Thames produce altogether a most
admirable effect."

I conclude these extracts With the following
words, in a letter written in. 1851, on the education
of children :

" I do not think you ought to take from your pupil all
initiative, and all liberty of choice. You should avoid de-
veloping in a young soul either the spirit of servitude or
the spirit of independence, because both are contrary to the
true state of a Christian, such as the Gospel describes. The
ohild who never deliberates, who never makes a choice, who
is merely passive in all his acts, will never be fit for any
thing but cowardly submission to the men and the cir-
cumstances which are uppermost by the effect of accident ;
and he who is bred up independent of every one will never
submit where submission is due, or endure with honour
and with reason the pain of legitimate obedience. A child
should not command, nor should be obeyed on every occa-
sion; but neither should he be reduced to servility like a
slave, nor be made to fear having a thought of his own."

A GANG OF BIIRGLARS.—The past week has wit-
nessed the committal of two noirsirious desperadoes, who
have for some time been the supposed leaders of a party of
thieves, burglars, and. poachers with which the neighbour-
hood of Scarbonugh has long been infested. A few weeks
ago an at:,empt was made to enter in a ielonious manner a
Warehouse belonging to Mr. Thomas Pickering, a farmer at
Newby. The warehouse had in it a borrowed light, which
communicated with Mr. Pickering's bedroom. At about 1
in the morning of Nov. 27 last he was aroused by his wife
saying that thieves were breaking into the house. On look-
ing through the window into the warehouse he saw a man's
hand through a hole in the roof. He called out and the
hand was withdrawn. He then loaded his gun with powder
and shot and awaited the renewal of the attempt, which
was shortly made. This time the hole in the roof' was en-
larged, and a man had landed himself through it upon the
rafters that ran across the building internally. It was very
dark at the time, but while in this position the man struck
a light, whereby Mr. Pickering distinctly saw his Lace. Mr.
Pickering said he would fire, and the thief, slipping through
the hole again, told him to " Fire away." Mr. Pickering
fired at the robber as he was retreating, and, hearing the
cry of " Oh, dear 1" he felt sure he had wounded the man.
The sequel proves this to have been the fact. The robbers
escaped, but a description of the man seen Ly Mr. Pickering
has at length enabled the police to apprehend him. When
taken, the constable examined his thigh, and found it was
marked with about 20 newly made shot marks. His name
is James Hall. About the time of Ha l's apprehension
another man was taken on suspicion as an accomplice of
Hall. This has also proved a correct surmise, as Hall has
become an approver against him. His name is Quilkin,
and he is known as a ticket-of leave man. He appeared
before the authorities of the city of York nearly 30 times
'prior to and during the year 1856, and he was sentenced to
six years' penal aervitude.—Sosters Ceturdies Herald.