nded
at once to widen and modify his thought. He had seen the Tractarian
Movement from a distance, in due perspective. He had also seen
Catholicism at close quarters. He had realised that the logical
consequence of the teaching of the former could be nothing less than
unqualified submission to the latter. On his return to England he
learned that more than one of his Oxford friends was arriving,
reluctantly, at the same conclusion. Then there arose within him the
fiercest struggle his gentle nature had ever yet known. He was torn by
the desire to go forward, risking all, with those whom he reverenced;
yet was restrained by a sense of honour. For there was in Julius a
strain of obstinate, almost fanatic, loyalty. To the Anglican Church he
had pledged himself. Through her ministry he had received illumination.
To the work of her awakening he had given all his young enthusiasm. How
then could he desert her? Her rites might be maimed. The scandal of
schism might tarnish her fair fame. Accusations of sloth and
lukewarmness might not unjustly be preferred against her. All this he
admitted; and it was very characteristic of the man that, just because
he did admit it, he remained within her fold.

Yet the decision was dislocating to all his thought, even as the
struggle had been. It left him bruised. It cruelly shook his
self-confidence. For he was not one of those persons upon whom the
shipwreck of long-cherished hopes and purposes have a stimulating
effect, filling them merely with a buoyant satisfaction at the
opportunity afforded them of beginning all over again! Julius was
oppressed by the sense of a great failure. The diaries of this period
are but sorrowful reading. He believed he should go softly all his
days; and, from a certain point of view, in this he was right.

And it was here that Sir Richard Calmady intervened. He had watched his
cousin's struggle, had accepted its reality, sympathising, through
friendship rather than through moral or intellectual agreement. For he
was one of those fortunate mortals who, while possessing a strong sense
of God, have but small necessity to define Him. Many of Julius's
keenest agonies appeared to him subjective, a matter of words and
phrases. Yet he respected them, out of the sincere regard he bore the
man who suffered them. He did more. He tried a practical remedy.
Modestly, as one asking rather than conferring a favour, he invited
Julius to remain at Brockhurst, on a fair stipen