.

THE HOLY WEEK.
The _nil admirari_ school are out of favour.

In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything.

Since the days of Wordsworth and Peter Bell, every petty poet and romantic writer has had his sneer at the shallow sceptic to whom a cowslip was a cowslip only, and who called a spade a spade.

I feel, therefore, painfully that I am not of my own day when I express my deliberate conviction, that the ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome are--the word must come out sooner or later--an imposture.