look upon the
consulship of Trieste as a gift to Sir Richard Burton for his services
to the nation, and we must decline to interfere with him in any way."
[520]

Chapter XXXI. Burton's Religion

145. Burton's Religion.

As regards religion, Burton had in early life, as we have seen, leaned
to Sufism; and this faith influenced him to the end. For a little
while he coquetted with Roman Catholicism; but the journey to Mecca
practically turned him into a Mohammedan. At the time of his marriage
he called himself an agnostic, and, as we have seen, he was always
something of a spiritualist. Lady Burton, charmingly mixing her
metaphors, [521] says "he examined every religion, and picked out its
pear to practise it." The state of his mind in 1880 is revealed by his
Kasidah. From that time to his death he was half Mohammedan and half
Agnostic. His wife pressed him in season and out of season to become
a Catholic, and, as we shall see, he did at last so far succumb to
her importunities as to sign a paper in which, to use Lady Burton's
expression, "he abjured the Protestant heresy," and put himself in
line with the Catholics. [522] But, as his opinions do not seem to
have changed one iota, this "profession of faith" could have had little
actual value. He listened to the prayers that his wife said with him
every night, and he distinctly approved of religion in other persons.
Thus, he praised the Princess of Wales [523] for hearing her children
say their "little prayers," [524] every night at her knee, and he is
credited with the remark: "A man without religion may be excused, but a
woman without religion is unthinkable." Priests, ceremonials, services,
all seemed to him only tinkling cymbals. He was always girding at
"scapularies and other sacred things." He delighted to compare Romanism
unfavourably with Mohammedanism. Thus he would say sarcastically,
"Moslems, like Catholics, pray for the dead; but as they do the praying
themselves instead of paying a priest to do it, their prayers, of
course, are of no avail." He also objected to the Church of Rome
because, to use his own words, "it has added a fourth person to the
Trinity." [525] He said he found "four great Protestant Sommites: (1)
St. Paul, who protested against St. Peter's Hebraism; (2) Mohammed,
who protested against the perversions of Christianity; (3) Luthur, who
protested against the rule of the Pope; (4) Sir Richard Burton, who
protested against the wh