Cardinal Newman's reminiscences of the life and ways of "the Roman Catholics" in his youth showy the temper of mind against which our present excess of play is a reaction.
"A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had been.

'The Roman Catholics'-- not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it--not a body, however small, representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church.

Here a set of poor Irishmen, coining and going at harvest time, or a colony of them lodged in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis.

There, perhaps, an elderly person, seen walking in the streets, grave and solitary, and strange, though noble in bearing, and said to be of good family, and 'a Roman Catholic.' An old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and the report attaching to it that 'Roman Catholics' lived there; but who they were, or what they did, or what was meant by calling them Roman Catholics, no one could tell, though it had an unpleasant sound, and told of form and superstition.

And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, looking with a boy's curious eyes through the great city, we might come to-day upon some Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and to-morrow on a chapel of the 'Roman Catholics': but nothing was to be gathered from it, except that there were lights burning there, and some boys in white, swinging censers: and what it all meant could only be learned from books, from Protestant histories and sermons; but they did not report well of the 'Roman Catholics,' but, on the contrary, deposed that they had once had power and had abused it.