said Freeborn, "good and bad."

"No," answered White, "heathen rites are bloody and impure, not
beautiful; and Mahometanism is as cold and as dry as any Calvinistic
meeting. The Mahometans have no altars or priests, nothing but a pulpit
and a preacher."

"Like St. Mary's," said Sheffield.

"Very like," said White; "we have no life or poetry in the Church of
England; the Catholic Church alone is beautiful. You would see what I
mean if you went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the
Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon, and
subdeacon, acolytes with lights, the incense, and the chanting--all
combine to one end, one act of worship. You feel it _is_ really a
worshipping; every sense, eyes, ears, smell, are made to know that
worship is going on. The laity on the floor saying their beads, or
making their acts; the choir singing out the _Kyrie_; and the priest and
his assistants bowing low, and saying the _Confiteor_ to each other.
This is worship, and it is far above reason."

This was spoken with all his heart; but it was quite out of keeping with
the conversation which had preceded it, and White's poetry was almost as
disagreeable to the party as Freeborn's prose.

"White, you should turn Catholic out and out," said Sheffield.

"My dear good fellow," said Bateman, "think what you are saying. You
can't really have gone to a schismatical chapel. Oh, for shame!"

Freeborn observed, gravely, that if the two Churches _were_ one, as had
been maintained, he could not see, do what he would, why it was wrong to
go to and fro from one to the other.

"You forget," said Bateman to White, "you have, or might have, all this
in your own Church, without the Romish corruptions."

"As to the Romish corruptions," answered White, "I know very little
about them."

Freeborn groaned audibly.

"I know very little about them," repeated White eagerly, "very little;
but what is that to the purpose? We must take things as we find them. I
don't like what is bad in the Catholic Church, if there is bad, but what
is good. I do not go to it for what is bad, but for what is good. You
can't deny that what I admire is very good and beautiful. Only you try
to introduce it into your own Church. You would give your ears, you know
you would, to hear the _Dies irae_."

Here a general burst of laughter took place. White was an Irishman. It
was a happy interruption; the party rose up from table, and a tap at
that minut