love of
ecclesiastical splendour, and so turned my vague love of ceremony into a
definite channel. Another contribution to the same end was made, all
unwittingly, by my dear and deeply Protestant father. He was an
enthusiast for Gothic architecture, and it was natural to enquire the
uses of such things as piscinas and sedilia in fabrics which he taught
me to admire. And then came the opportune discovery (in an idle moment
under a dull sermon) of the Occasional Offices of the Prayer Book. If
language meant anything, those Offices meant the sacramental system of
the Catholic Church; and the impression derived from the Prayer Book was
confirmed by Jeremy Taylor and _The Christian Year_. I was always
impatient of the attempt, even when made by the most respectable people,
to pervert plain English, and I felt perfect confidence in building the
Catholic superstructure on my Evangelical foundation.

As soon as I had turned fourteen, I was confirmed by the Bishop of Ely
(Harold Browne), and made my first Communion in Woburn Church on Easter
Day, April 21, 1867.

After the Easter Recess, I went with my parents to London, then seething
with excitement over the Tory Reform Bill, which created Household
Suffrage in towns. My father, being Sergeant-at-Arms, could give me a
seat under the Gallery whenever he chose, and I heard some of the most
memorable debates in that great controversy. In the previous year my
uncle, Lord Russell, with Mr. Gladstone as Leader of the House of
Commons, had been beaten in an attempt to lower the franchise; but the
contest had left me cold. The debates of 1867 awoke quite a fresh
interest in me. I began to understand the Democratic, as against the
Whig, ideal; and I was tremendously impressed by Disraeli, who seemed to
tower by a head and shoulders above everyone in the House. Gladstone
played a secondary and ambiguous part; and, if I heard him speak, which
I doubt, the speech left no dint in my memory.

At this point of the narrative it is necessary to make a passing
allusion to Doctors, who, far more than Premiers or Priests or any other
class of men, have determined the course and condition of my life. I
believe that I know, by personal experience, more about Doctors and
Doctoring than any other man of my age in England. I am, in my own
person, a monument of medical practice, and have not only seen, but
felt, the rise and fall of several systems of physic and surgery. To
have experienced the art