t I took all my books up-stairs to the library and told the
prefect of studies I could do no more to acquire knowledge by study.

"_Question._ How long were you unable to study? _Answer._ Two years
in Holland and one year in England. I never went to class those
years. I was a kind of a scandal, of course, in the house. When I got
a lucid interval of memory I studied, though much of the time I
hadn't a book in my room. Yet, when they came to ordain me, I knew
enough and was sent at once to the work of the ministry."

That his stupidity was not blameworthy is shown by the sympathy of
Isaac's superiors; that it was not natural is known to our readers by
their acquaintance with his native ability exhibited in his journals
and letters. The difficulty was confined almost wholly to study; to
fix his attention on the matter in the text-books, or to grasp it and
hold it in memory, was beyond his power. Meantime his letters to his
friends in New York and elsewhere were full of life. He kept a copy
of a carefully written one, addressed to an old-time friend of the
Brook Farm community. It is a model of brief statement of great
truths, and proves that the social difficulty can only be fully
remedied by the Catholic Church, which has an elevating force
incomparably more powerful than any other known to humanity. The
method used and the choice of arguments are peculiarly Isaac Hecker's
own, and the tone, though affectionate, is one of authority, as that
of an exponent of evident truth. His letters to his mother and his
brothers are full of controversy, abounding in appeals to Scripture,
to the voice of conscience, to the dictates of reason; and although
the tone is one of deep affection, the attacks on Protestantism are
keen, and the use of facts and persons as illustrations full of
intelligence. Most of the letters which we have found were addressed
to his mother, for whose conversion he had an ardent longing. With
one of them he sends her a little manuscript treatise on true Bible
Christianity which he had himself prepared. We give the reader
extracts from two letters, the first from one to his brother John and
the second from one to his mother:

"Your lamentation, dear John, on my separation from you, excites in
me a great astonishment. To justify this separation it seems to me
that you have only to open a page of the Gospels of Christ, and to
read it with a sincere belief in the words and a generous love of the
Saviour. As for