A romantic disposition is encouraged by the poets by whom you were too much influenced, but I have heard it very truly defined as a "compound of sensual desire and intellectual curiosity," originating therefore with our great Adversary, and consisting altogether of the nature of concupiscence. Forgive my outspokenness; it is, I feel, my duty, as your cousin and as a priest in the Holy Catholic Church, to undeceive you as to the true motives of your action. It may be too late to retrace your steps, but when your present erroneous desire finds that it will receive no true satisfaction, your motives will be seen by you to be what they were.

I am therefore, my dear Bertram, forced to the conclusion that you have been led into what is in every sense a most serious error. This, I think, you will see when the glamour exercised by the Roman Church has passed away, and you will then repent the rash resolution by which you have joined an heretical, and (in England and Wales) schismatic, body.

It is, of course, impossible that no modification should take place in the relations between you

and me. Your action has placed a deep and wide gulf between us. We no longer belong to the same Communion. But I trust that you will believe that I still regard you with affection, and am still willing to maintain such relations with you as may be possible in these sadly altered circumstances.-I remain, your affectionate cousin,

JOHN BEVOR.

The next letter which Bertram took up bore the arms of his uncle, Lord Cumnor :

CUMNOR CASTLE, OXFORDSHIRE,

DEAR BERTRAM,

26th April 1898.

I am exceedingly sorry to hear of the step which you have taken. I am not altogether surprised-though in you I did not expect it-because I have long considered that all these ritualistic developments in the Church of England must logically lead the consistent minds among those who thus play with fire, into the complete Romanist errors. I have said this over and over again to your cousin, my son John,

when expressing my disapproval of the pernicious innovations which he has introduced, against my express wishes, at Cowslip, and I wish, though I hardly hope, that your defection may be a lesson and a warning to him. What is to be expected, as I have so often told him, when English clergymen introduce the most objectionable characteristics of altar sacrificial worship, and both in teaching and forms inculcate, contrary to the express prohibition of their Church, what is practically the idolatrous doctrine of transubstantiation? Individuals in their congregations become habituated to all this, so that they cannot do without it; then, after a time, perceive that these are not truly the doctrines of the Reformed Church of England, or of the nation at large, and rather than abandon them, join the Church of Rome.

I fail to understand, however, how you, whom I always took to be a man of independence of thought, and knowledge of the world, have been able to submit yourself to priestly control, to accept ridiculous superstitions, and to join a foreign Church. It is, in my opinion, as if you had chosen, without any valid reason, to

naturalise yourself as a Frenchman or Italian. Indeed it is worse, because in this case you not only abandon your own country, but you deliberately accept what is obviously untrue. I have the gravest doubts, moreover, whether a man who accepts the infallibility of the Pope can possibly be a good subject of the Queen, and certainly, whether this be so or not, he will find great difficulties in his way if he wishes either, as you might reasonably have done, to enter the House of Commons, or to obtain any important office of trust. You can hardly expect either electors or the Government to feel any confidence in a man who has placed his conscience under the control of priests who are themselves subject to a foreign potentate. I can have no doubt, looking at the condition of other countries, that a great increase of Romanism and Ritualism would utterly destroy the national character and qualities to which British prosperity and Empire is due. I am obliged to add that I myself shall not in future be able to invite you to Cumnor Castle. would not be consistent with my position to show any countenance to Romanism, nor should I feel that I could safely allow you to have

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any intercourse with your cousins, my daughters. Margaret is already too much inclined to be influenced by her brother John, and I have on several occasions been obliged to warn her of the inevitable tendency towards Rome of those who once allow themselves to depart from the firm and solid principles of the English Reformation.-Believe me, yours sincerely,

CUMNOR.

P.S.-I need not tell you how much pain your conduct has given to your aunt.

Another letter, in a family handwriting, was from his pretty cousin Lady Margaret Bevor, a girl of twenty-two, who was lively, active, inclined to roam from the beaten paths, and lived in a state of continual suppressed revolt against the aridity of ideas and the dull routine of the solemn life which reigned both at Cumnor Castle and in the social circle to which her parents belonged when in London. The visits of her cousin Bertram seemed to her to be the only window in her life through which she

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