Excerpt from The Rambler, Vol. 5: A Catholic Journal and Review of Home and Foreign Literature, Politics, Science, Music and the Fine Arts Still, joyful and bold as we are, and as we ought to be, we can scarcely let the opening of such a year as this go by without recurring for a while to our anxieties respecting our selves. Encouraging as is the present position of the Catholic body in England, when contrasted with its lot for many a past year, it were foll to overlook the reality and weight of the disadvantages under which we still labour; for we cannot for get that the promise of perpetuity and victory which has been given to the Church is not given to any one individual branch of the whole. It matters not that for three hundred years of persecution the Catholics of this country have held firm the faith of their fathers, and that in our own time a movement is in progress which half a century a 0 was deemed impossible. In a year, or a month, all may be clianged. Notwithstanding the infallible nature of the Divine promise to the Church her self, the conversion of England depends in no little degree upon ourselves - upon our zeal, our piety, our wisdom, and our prayers. With our hopes for the coming year we there fore mingle many a fear lest our own carelessness or errors should ruin the glorious cause we have in hand. The sight of that vast array of foes who are drawn up for the battle against us awakens such bitter thoughts of our own short comings, that we are almost tempted to cast awa our new found hopes in despair, and to believe that Gatho icism, such as it is in our hands, can never master that terrible adversary with which it is summoned to contend. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.