a public-house or a beershop. Clean-looking
dwellings immediately confront it; green fields take up the
background; an air of quietude, half pastoral, half genteel,
pervades it; but this ecclesiastical rose has its thorn. Only in its
proximate surroundings is the place semi-rural and select. As the
circle widens--townwards at any rate--you soon get into a region of
murky houses, ragged children, running beer jugs, poverty; and as
you move onwards, in certain directions, the plot thickens, until
you get into the very lairs of ignorance, depravity, and misery. St.
Augustine's "district" is a very large one; it embraces 8,000 or
9,000 persons, and their characters, like their faces, are of every
colour and size. Much honest industry, much straight-forwardness and
every day kindness, much that smells of gin, and rascality, and
heathenism may be seen in the district. There is plenty of room for
all kinds of reformers in the locality; and if any man can do any
good in it, whatever may be his creed or theory, let him do it. The
priests in connection with St. Augustine's Catholic Church are doing
their share in this matter, and it is about them, their church, and
their congregation that we have now a few words to say. The church
we name is not a very old one. It was formally projected in 1836;
the first stone of it was laid on the 13th of November, 1838; and it
was opened on the 30th of July, 1840, by Dr. Briggs, afterwards
first bishop of the Catholic diocese of Beverley. It has a plain yet
rather stately exterior. Nothing fanciful, nor tinselled, nor
masonically smart characterises it. Four large stone pillars,
flanked with walls of the same material surmounted with brick, a
flight of steps, a portico, a broad gable with massive coping, and a
central ornament at the angle, are all which the facade presents.
The doors are lateral, and are left open from morning till night
three hundred and sixty-five days every year.

The interior of the church is spacious, wonderfully clean, and
decorated at the high altar end in most tasteful style. We have not
inquired whether charity begins at home or not in this place;
perhaps it does not; but it is certain that painting does; for all
the fine colouring, with its many formed classical devices, at the
sanctuary was executed by one of the members of the congregation.
The principal altar is a very fine one, and a fair amount of pious
pleasure may be derived from looking at a tremendous pas