olding from the chrysalis of genuine Protestantism and
casting it off. This was readily perceived in Isaac Hecker's bearing
and conversation by acute Episcopalians themselves, as in the case of
Dr. Seabury, who, as Father Hecker relates in the articles above
referred to, prophesied Brownson's conversion to Catholicity, and did
so for reasons which Seabury must have known would apply to young
Hecker also.

Many at this time were being drawn by poetical sentiment to the
beautiful and religious forms of Episcopalian worship; drawn and held
rather by imagination and feeling than by any adhesion of their minds
to distinctive Anglican doctrines. Father Hecker was, indeed, more
poetical in temperament than at first acquaintance he seemed to be,
but his mind was so constituted that he must have the main reasons of
things, whether religious or not, firmly settled before he could
enjoy their use. Nor could he be content with fragments of revealed
truth, such as are found in all denominations of non-Catholics.
"There is a large floating body of Catholic truth in the world," says
Newman; "it comes down by tradition from age to age. . . . Men
[outside the church] take up and profess these scattered truths,
merely because they fall in with them." Not so Father Hecker: no
flotsam and jetsam of doctrine for him, unless some fragment would
reveal to him the name of the ship from which it had been torn, and
the port from which she had sailed, and so lead him to the discovery
of the ship herself, crew, cargo, port, and owner.

Yet he lingered long over the claim of Anglicanism to be the Catholic
religion. Of Mr. Haight and of his interviews with him we have
already spoken. Through him he came across a published letter of a
Mr. Norris, Episcopal minister in Carlisle, Pa., which so pleased him
for its Catholic tendency that he wrote to him, asking to be allowed
to go to Carlisle and live there as the writer's pupil. The answer,
though a refusal of this request, was kind, and contained a cordial
invitation to visit Mr. Norris after Easter. On his way to Concord,
in the following spring, Isaac made a long detour to the little town
in southern Pennsylvania, interviewed Mr. Norris, and came away no
wiser than before.

The following words of the diary, under date of March 30, 1844, refer
to an Episcopal dignitary of higher grade:

"Mr. Haight gave me a note of introduction to Dr. Seabury. I called
to see him two evenings ago and had a very