with me in spite of all troubles, and of inevitable periods of coldness and dryness. At once I felt, not as if I had exchanged something for something else, but as if I had passed out of nothing into reality. I felt as one awoke from a troubled dream to a joyful existence. Anglicanism seemed a mere theory, not a thing in itself, in spite of all the moral goodness, piety, and energy in good works of those who belong to it. No one has experienced all this virtue better than I have, or recognises it more freely, but it was their Church which seemed to me to be non-existent. They, or many of them, have the faith, but are not in the Church. can truly say that after my change my love for my fellow - countrymen was increased and widened. Before, I looked away from them, and with desire towards the Catholic Church. Now I look towards them with a great desire that they also should enter in. At peace myself, I can bend all my will to desire the peace of others. If to the natural race virtues of the Englishman, honesty, sincerity, courage, justice, zeal for righteousness, could be added those still finer qualities which so flourish in the

I

Catholic Church, tender charity, humility, reverence, fraternity, obedience, sweetness, natural joyfulness, how perfect a flower of humanity might grow upon this dear soil.

I now bid you welcome within the doors of the Church. It may be a comfort to you to know that I have never for a day or an hour regretted my own step, or felt a doubt or shadow of turning. Even if the whole of the Christian religion should be a dream and delusion, how, after all, could a man live better, both in the interests of his own real happiness and that of others, than by following the rule of life laid down by the Catholic Church, and by being a member of this best, world-wide confraternity?

I hope that you will some day visit us here in Brompton. I am not the only old Etonian here. Our services are, I think, beautiful and consoling. I cannot tell you how much of late my devotion towards the Blessed Virgin has increased. Before I became a Catholic I used to try to think of her as real and existing, but I never truly, as I now see, succeeded in doing So. When at Sunday vespers we chant the

solemn Magnificat, I can hardly express what a flood of sweetness fills my poor heart. And yet I do not think that my devotion to the Mother interferes with my devotion to the Son; rather it seems to increase it, just as, even in human affections, love for a whole family seems to increase one's love for each member of it. How rejoiced I shall be to know that in you one more heart, too, shares in all this full sweetness of love.

H. C.

The next letter was from a man with whom Bertram Bevor's acquaintance rested upon a foundation of golf. When they met they either played it together or talked about it, and had nothing else in common. The figure of Mowbray Norman rose up before Bevor's mental visionstoutly built, medium height, ruddy-brown complexion, grey-blue eyes, cleanly-shaven face, red coat, flannel knickerbockers, neat stockings and shoes, a driver in his hand, an earnest expression, his eye on the ball, and a caddie behind him—all set in a maritime landscape, under a

pale-blue sky. A most normal English type. He was very like hundreds of thousands of his fellow-countrymen.

5 CONNAUGHT GATE, LONDON, W.,

MY DEAR BEVOR,

30th April 1898.

Here is an admirable opportunity

of getting a long lease of a bit of land on the Essex coast which can be made into a first-rate golf-links. About a mile and a half long by half a mile wide, splendid sand-hills, not more than two miles from a station with good trains to town. Terms are lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, £500 down, and £50 annual rent. I am trying to find fifty men who will put down £10 each and form the nucleus of a club. I hope that you will join; it really is an opportunity not to be lost.

By the way, I hear that you have lately become a Roman Catholic. I know nothing about their manners and customs, but I trust that this will not prevent you from playing golf on Sundays. I really am so busy now that I can hardly ever

take any other day, and I should be sorry not to have any more rounds with you at the old royal game. Yours sincerely,

MOWBRAY NORMAN.

Bertram Bevor then opened a letter written in a strong uncompromising handwriting. It was from a clergyman of the Evangelical school in the neighbourhood of Denham Court, who had acted as his tutor for a time in his boyhood, and had prepared him for confirmation. He was usually considered, especially by neighbouring curates, very old-fashioned in his ideas. The letter ran thus:

DEAR BERTRAM,

LONGRIDGE VICARAGE, BERKS,

27th April.

You must be aware how strongly I disapprove of the step which you have taken. You have been seduced, like so many others, by the siren allurements of Rome, exercised through a false-minded (often unconsciously, no doubt) and intriguing priesthood, who, like the Pharisees denounced by our Lord, compass sea and land