ST. AUGUSTINE’S CATHOLIC CHURCH.

St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, Preston, is of a retiring disposition; it occupies a very southern position; is neither in the town nor out of it; and unlike many sacred edifices is more than 50 yards from either 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 pastoral candlestick which stands on one side.  It is, when charged with a full-sized candle, perhaps five feet ten high, and it has a very patriarchal and decorous appearance—­looks grave and authoritative,