ion-state of opinion, his religious views never
reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their
multitude and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me,
even when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his
admiration of the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the reformers.
He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, or sacerdotal
power and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim,
"The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants;" and he
gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious
teaching. He had a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of
virginity; and he considered the Blessed Virgin its great pattern.
He delighted in thinking of the saints; he had a keen appreciation
of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and its heights; and he
was more than inclined to believe a large amount of miraculous
interference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced
the principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to
the Real Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully
drawn to the medieval church, but not to the primitive.

He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman
to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete.
He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art;
and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion.
He had no turn for theology as such. He had no appreciation of the
writings of the Fathers, of the detail or development of doctrine, of
the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, of the
teaching of the ecumenical councils, or of the controversies out of
which they arose. He took an eager, courageous view of things on the
whole. I should say that his power of entering into the minds of
others did not equal his other gifts; he could not believe, for
instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be Antichristian. On
many points he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I
did not. He seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a
different kind, the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a
high Tory of the cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism
of the opponents of the Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of
the theocratic church; he went abroad and was shocked by the
degeneracy which he thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.

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