The Sun.
London, England, 1868-06-24 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE.

UNLAWFUL SEIZURE.—In the Bail Court, the case of
Martin v. England, an action brought to recover damages
for trespass and unlawful conversion, was tried. It
appeared tint in May 1866, the pla'ntiff, who is foreman
to a provision dealer, hired and furnished a house in Islip.
street, Kentish Town,' bat circumstances arising which
prevented him from occupying it hi.nself, he put h's father
and mother into the house in order that they might let
ont a portion of it as furnished lodgings. On Easter
Tuesday last the defendant, who was connected with the
Britannia Advance and Discount Company, 30, Polygon-
street, Clarendon-square, St. Pancras, forcibly broke into
plaintiff's house, and carried away no less than two waggon
loads of furniture, under the authority, as he alleged, of a
bill of sale given him by the plaintiff's mother. The
defendant urged that the plaintiff's mother was in the
house, and represented that the goods belonged to her.
The jury gave £l5O damages.

ACTION AGAINST THE SOUTH-EASTERN RAILWAY COM-
I'ANY.—In the Court of Common Pleas, Miss Reeve, a
milliner, claimed damages from the South-Eastern Rail-
way Company for damage sustained by ber and alleged to
have been caused by the negligence of the defendants.
'is was one of a series of actions arising out of a collision
which occurred the day after Christmas Day last on
Cannon-street Bridge. There was a dense fog, and the
train in which the plaintiff was had been brought up by a
fog signal, and was run into by another train. The plain-
tiff, a cap milliner, bad her knee cut, and wa3 otherwise
rather severely injured. The jury gave the plaintiff £350
damages.

THE MODE OF ELECTING CHUBCHWARDENS.—In the
Court of Queen's Bench the case of Regina v. the Arch-
neacon of Exeter was heard. It seemed that at Halberton,
in Devonshire, the parishioners appointed the two church-
v a .dens at a vestry Ince,ing. Mr. Clarke and another
gentleman were chosen. On Mr. Clarke refusing to act a
Mr. Cooke was chosen to succeed him at a vestry meeting
subsequently convened, which excused Mr. Clarke from
the performance of the duties of the office. Before Mr.
Cooke had made the requisite statutory declarations he
agreed to resign on condition that Mr. Clarke would
consent to accept the office. Mr. Clarke did so consent,
and a third vestry meeting to confirm his former election was
convened by a notice stating that the object of the meeting
was such. The validity of this proceeding was the point argued.
The court was of opinion that after Mr. Clarke's resigna-
tion had been accepted, a meeting convened simply for the
purpose of confirming his former election, and giving no
power to nominate any other person to the office, was
irregular, and the notice of the meeting insufficient, and
therefore that Mr. Clarke was not entitled to fill the office
of churchwarden.

The condition of Ireland, so often the subject
of impassioned harangues in the Houses of the Legislature,
is frequently treated in the proverbially dry pages of par.
liamentary blue-books. One of these, issued on Tuesday,
spewed an increase of parperism in the year which ended
in Febuary last. At the same time, testimony was borne
to the unremitting industry of the agricultural population,
to the little apparent increase of distress which has attended
the political disturbances of the past two years, and to the
cheerful payment of the farm•rents and poor rates during
the same period. A remarkable evidence of the improved
condition of the Irish peasantry has been their compara•
tive freedom from epidemic disease since the great famine
of 1O plusscd'9YeT g iylaud,"

CELEBRATED SANCTUARIES OF THE
MADONNA.

(From the TVestainster Gazette.)

There is nothing, perhaps, in the whole round
of Catholic religious practices, which rouses
Protestant indignation, or initiates Protestant
spleen, so much as devotion to any definite
object or place. Devotion to our Lady and to
the Saints and the cultus of their images
are, of course, condemned in the general ;
but, when this devotion and this cu/tus are ex-
emplified in actual detail—when a peculiar
reverence is manifested for some individual
image or picture, or a peculiar efficacy is attri-
buted to prayers offered in some specially
favoured locality—the feeling excited is that
of positive anger and repugnance. To vene-
rate the Madonna is bad enough, but to vene-
rate the Madonna of this place or that place,
as if she were more gracious or more powerful
here than there, or were (so to say) a diffe-
rent person in one spot from what she is in
another—this is a form of superstition so de-
graded as to fall almost below contempt. We
all remember how Walter Scott availed himself
of this particular feature of Catholic devotion
in drawing the portrait of Louis XI. Of course,
as represented in the acts and expressions attri-
buted to that unprincipled and double-minded
King, the devotion in question is simply ridicu-
lous, though even he can hardly be held re-
sponsible for all the absurdities which our
novelist has brought together for the amuse-
ment of his readers ; still- the undoubted
fact remains. The good and pious Catholics
have ever been attracted to honour, with a
peculiar honour certain places, images, and
pictures more than others, and have been en-
couraged so to do by the authoritative sanctions
of the Church. Even amongst such of our
separated brethren as have the strongest lean-
ing towards the Catholic faith, and who (it
may be) would willingly subscribe to all its
articles, save that most practical one which
condemns their present position, the supre-
macy of Peter's successor, there are those who
would still fain regard this character of Catho-
lic devotion as an accidental peculiarity attach-
ing to some particular age, or resulting from
the temperament of particular races, especially
the southern. Yet, nothing is more indisputable
than that, on the one hand, these "superstitious
tendencies," as they are called, are as rife as
ever among Catholic people, and that, on the
other, in the days when Catholicism was the
religion of North as of South, no difference was
observable in the respect between the faithful
of England and those of Italy ; Our Lady of
Walsingham being venerated in our own dear
country with a devotion as tender and as
warm as was, and is, the Madonna del Carmine
in Naples.
The real fact is, that the aversion to which
we refer results from the vagueness of Pro-
testantism itself ; its cold withdrawal from all
immediate contact with the embodied truths
of the faith, truths which are ever embodying
themselves because God Himself has become
incarnate ; its love of putting dry dogmas and
intellectual conceptions in the place of a
substantial faith—these dry dogmas (be it
remarked in passing) having a direct tendency
to wither up altogether, and these intellectual
conceptions to evaporate, or, in other words,
to reason themselves away—and, more than
all, from its corresponding lack of devotion
to the objects of faith, including pre-eminently
the Blessed Mother of God, and even the Sac-
red Humanity itself. Protestantism, in short,
realizes neither the objects of faith nor the
objects of worship. Unfortunately our own
position as a minority in a Protestant land has
hindered us from presenting Catholic devotion
in all its rich and manifold proportions, and
indeed, has had a tendency to curtail those pro-
portions, and even to abate the warmth of our
personal love and veneration for Mary and the
Saints. We hail in Dr. Northcote's book,
therefore, an addition to our higher class of
literature, as opportune as it is delightful.
" What is a sanctuary ?" is the heading of his
introductory chapter, in which he demon-
strates, by the brief and cogent argument of
facts, that from the 'very first centuries the
Christian religion " contained as an integral
portion of itself, a special devotion towards cer-
tain sanctuaries ;" and, moreover, that it was
believed, as St. Augustine testifies, " that it
was the will of God to honour His saints by
making more frequent or more wonderful
manifestations of His presence in these places
than in others." The Church of the 18th
century did but therefore express the belief of
the saints and doctors of the sth, when she
" condemned as rash, mischievous, and con-
trary to the pions custom of the faithful, that
declaration of the Synod of Pistoia, which
condemned all special cultus of one image of a
saint in preference to another;" and it is only
in accordance with the faith of the earliest
times that " theologians lay it down, as con-
fessed by all doctors and placed beyond dis-
pute, that God sets this mark of difference upon
certain holy places according to His own hidden
counsel, the reasons whereof we cannot under-
stand, whilst we daily experience its blessed
results."

Dr. Northcote's book is neither contro-
versial nor apologetic, but it is something
much better for the purpose. His account of
the sanctuaries, which he notices, takes the
narrative form ; he does not pretend (as he
says) to enter upon a critical examination of
the exact historical truth of what he relates,
although in one or two instances, and, in par-
ticular, in the case of the Sanctuary of Our
Lady of La Salette, he has given the evidence
in somewhat fuller detail. Nevertheless, the
mere simple narrative. characterized as it is by
a peculiar lucidity which enables the ordinary
reader to grasp without effort the main proofs
which establish its truth, is, we think, calcu-
lated to be more convincing to common sense,
unfettered by prejudice, than would the most
laboured argument, while it furnishes matter
of edification to every pious mind. Indeed, it
is not too much to say that the style adopted
in this singularly interesting volume, is quite
perfect of its kind ; while the manner in which,
by incidental allusion to God's dealings as re-
corded in Holy Scripture, the writer occasion-
ally disposes of or anticipates an objection
without the necessity of further notice, dis-
plays a skill not a little remarkable. The abso-
lute amount of information contained in the
work is considerable; and we believe that many
amongst ourselves will be surprised to find how
much solid historical evidence exists for events
and circumstances which Protestants are in
the habit of classing under the sweeping and
convenient category of legends. We may par-
ticularly specify the evidence adduced by our
author in support of that most famous and
most miraculous of sanctuaries, the holy house
of Loreto. Dr. Northcote gives an excellent
resume of this evidence, and of the history of
the sanctuary, to which we would earnestly
direct the attention of all who have hitherto
regarded the subject as one that would not
endure the test of historical criticism, and espe-
cially of any who may have been perplexed by
Dean Stanley's objections. But there is evi-
dence of a different kind, which speaks more
powerfully to the Catholic heart than historical
proof, and belongs to a higher order : it is that
which springs from the innumerable graces
and favours which have been received in this
and similarly favoured spots. On this subject,
in connection with the Santa Casa, which holds
a special pre-eminence of its own, our author
says, " Our limits will not allow us to specify
instances of miraculous cures, deliverance from
demoniacal possession, and the like, with which
the histories of Loreto abound ; but we cannot
conclude without briefly noticing miracles of
another kind, yet more wonderful and equally
numerous. Everybody who has had the hap-
piness of visiting Loreto, bears testimony to
the devotional effect of the sanctuary. More-
over, it was observed by its old historians—
and the observation has been commonly re-
peated by modern writers, as being still con-
formable with the truth—that there are few
persons so utterly hardened in sin, but that
on, entering this holy place, they axe conscious