m, and also have a bearing on my later
convictions.

In the paper to which I have referred, written either in the long
vacation of 1820, or in October, 1823, the following notices of my
school days were sufficiently prominent in my memory for me to
consider them worth recording:--"I used to wish the Arabian Tales
were true: my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical
powers, and talismans ... I thought life might be a dream, or I an
Angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful
device concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the
semblance of a material world."

Again, "Reading in the Spring of 1816 a sentence from [Dr. Watts's]
'Remnants of Time,' entitled 'the Saints unknown to the world,' to
the effect, that 'there is nothing in their figure or countenance to
distinguish them,' etc. etc., I supposed he spoke of Angels who lived
in the world, as it were disguised."

The other remark is this: "I was very superstitious, and for some
time previous to my conversion" [when I was fifteen] "used constantly
to cross myself on going into the dark."

Of course I must have got this practice from some external source or
other; but I can make no sort of conjecture whence; and certainly no
one had ever spoken to me on the subject of the Catholic religion,
which I only knew by name. The French master was an _emigre_ priest,
but he was simply made a butt, as French masters too commonly were in
that day, and spoke English very imperfectly. There was a Catholic
family in the village, old maiden ladies we used to think; but I knew
nothing but their name. I have of late years heard that there were
one or two Catholic boys in the school; but either we were carefully
kept from knowing this, or the knowledge of it made simply no
impression on our minds. My brother will bear witness how free the
school was from Catholic ideas.

I had once been into Warwick Street Chapel, with my father, who, I
believe, wanted to hear some piece of music; all that I bore away
from it was the recollection of a pulpit and a preacher and a boy
swinging a censer.

When I was at Littlemore, I was looking over old copy-books of my
school days, and I found among them my first Latin verse-book; and in
the first page of it, there was a device which almost took my breath
away with surprise. I have the book before me now, and have just been
showing it to others. I have written in the first page, in my
school-boy hand,