accustomed to a close supervision from superiors, and in the course of time the countenance comes to adapt itself automatically to the occupation. In point of fact there are few who are not keenly concerned about the material success of their function—their singing, their deportment and appearance. At such a time as Holy Week, for instance, the feverish anxiety for the success of the extraordinary services runs so high that one may safely say they are quite unattended with religious feeling in the sanctuary: ceremonies and music are practised for weeks in advance, and, when the time comes, celebrants are too busy and too nervous to think of more than the merely mechanical or theatrical part of the devotions.
And the same thought applies, naturally, to preaching: it runs on the same lines in the Church of Rome as in every other church. There are deeply religious preachers whose only serious thought is for the good of their hearers, as they conceive it; there are preachers who think only of making a flattering impression on their audience, or who are utterly indifferent what effect or impression they produce: the vast majority strive to benefit their hearers, and are not unassisted in their efforts by a very natural modicum of self-interest. I heard a typical story of one a few years ago. The priest in question is one of the most familiar figures in Catholic circles in the north of England, an ardent zealot for the ‘conversion’ of England, and, I believe, a very earnest and
