my living on September 18th. I had not the means of doing
it legally at Oxford. The late Mr. Goldsmid aided me in resigning it
in London. I found no fault with the Liberals; they had beaten me in
a fair field. As to the act of the Bishops, I thought, as Walter
Scott has applied the text, that they had "seethed the kid in his
mother's milk."

I said to a friend:--

"Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni."

And now I have brought almost to an end, as far as this sketch has
to treat of them, the history both of my opinions, and of the public
acts which they involved. I had only one more advance of mind to
make; and that was, to be _certain_ of what I had hitherto
anticipated, concluded, and believed; and this was close upon my
submission to the Catholic Church. And I had only one more act to
perform, and that was the act of submission itself. But two years yet
intervened before the date of these final events; during which I was
in lay communion in the Church of England, attending its services as
usual, and abstaining altogether from intercourse with Catholics,
from their places of worship, and from those religious rites and
usages, such as the Invocation of Saints, which are characteristics
of their creed. I did all this on principle; for I never could
understand how a man could be of two religions at once.

What then I now have to add is of a private nature, being my
preparation for the great event, for which I was waiting, in the
interval between the autumns of 1843 and 1845.

And I shall almost confine what I have to say to this one point, the
difficulty I was in as to the best mode of revealing the state of my
mind to my friends and others, and how I managed to do it.

Up to January, 1842, I had not disclosed my state of unsettlement to
more than three persons, as has been mentioned above, and is repeated
in the letters which I am now about to give to the reader. To two of
them, intimate and familiar companions, in the Autumn of 1839: to the
third, an old friend too, when, I suppose, I was in great distress
of mind upon the affair of the Jerusalem Bishopric. In May, 1843,
I mentioned it to the friend, by whose advice I wished, as far as
possible, to be guided. To mention it on set purpose to any one,
unless indeed I was asking advice, I should have felt to be a crime.
If there is anything that was and is abhorrent to me, it is the
scattering doubts, and unsettling consciences without necessity. A
stron