d an amiable man....' At Rome, as the state of his eyesight
forbade too close resort to picture galleries and museums, he listened
to countless sermons, all carefully recorded in his diary. Dr. Wiseman
gave him a lesson in the missal. On his birthday he went with Manning to
hear mass with the pope's choir, and they were placed on the bench
behind the cardinals. At St. Peter's he recalled that there his first
conception of the unity of the church had come into his mind, and the
desire for its attainment--'an object in every human sense hopeless, but
not therefore the less to be desired, for the horizon of human hope is
not that of divine power and wisdom. That idea has been upon the whole,
I believe, the ruling one of my life during the period that has since
elapsed.' On January 19, he bade 'a reluctant adieu to the mysterious
city, whither he should repair who wishes to renew for a time the dream
of life.'

A few years later Mr. Gladstone noted some differences between English
and Italian preaching that are of interest:--

The fundamental distinction between English and Italian preaching
is, I think, this: the mind of the English preacher, or reader of
sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition,
that of the Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying
himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men, in order to
move them; the former is a man applying himself, with his best
ability in many cases, to a fixed form of matter, in order to _make
it_ move those whom he addresses. The action in the one case is
warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart; in the other
it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first
is surely far superior to the second in truth and reality. The
preacher bears an awful message. Such messengers, if sent with
authority, are too much identified with, and possessed by, that
which they carry, to view it objectively during its delivery, it
absorbs their very being and all its energies, they _are_ their
message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those
to whose hearts they desire to bring it. In truth, what we want is
the following of nature, and her genial development. (March 20,
Palm Sunday, '42.)

II

GOES ABROAD. BOOK PUBLISHED

It was the end of January (1839)