ord ever did."

"You mean me," said White, with earnestness; "you have misunderstood me
grievously. I have ever been most faithful to the Church of England. You
never heard me say anything inconsistent with the warmest attachment to
it. I have never, indeed, denied the claims of the Romish Church to be a
branch of the Catholic Church, nor will I,--that's another thing quite;
there are many things which we might borrow with great advantage from
the Romanists. But I have ever loved, and hope I shall ever venerate, my
own Mother, the Church of my baptism."

Sheffield made an odd face, and no one spoke. White continued,
attempting to preserve an unconcerned manner: "It is remarkable," he
said, "that Mr. Bolton--who, though a layman, and no divine, is a
sensible, practical, shrewd man--never liked that pulpit; he always
prophesied no good would come of it."

The silence continuing, White presently fell upon Sheffield. "I defy
you," he said, with an attempt to be jocular, "to prove what you have
been hinting; it is a great shame. It's so easy to speak against men, to
call them injudicious, extravagant, and so on. You are the only
person--"

"Well, well, I know it, I know it," said Sheffield; "we're only
canonizing you, and I am the devil's advocate."

Charles wanted to hear something about Willis; so he turned the current
of White's thoughts by coming up and asking him whether there was any
truth in the report he had heard from Vincent several weeks before; had
White heard from him lately? White knew very little about him
definitely, and was not able to say whether the report was true or not.
So far was certain, that he had returned from abroad and was living at
home. Thus he had not committed himself to the Church of Rome, whether
as a theological student or as a novice; but he could not say more. Yes,
he had heard one thing more; and the subject of a letter which he had
received from him corroborated it--that he was very strong on the point
that Romanism and Anglicanism were two religions; that you could not
amalgamate them; that you must be Roman or Anglican, but could not be
Anglo-Roman or Anglo-Catholic. "This is what a friend told me. In his
letter to myself," White continued, "I don't know quite what he meant,
but he spoke a good deal of the necessity of faith in order to be a
Catholic. He said no one should go over merely because he thought he
should like it better; that he had found out by experience that no one