English liturgy as compared with mediaeval forms of prayer; and pressed
upon his hearers the strongest warnings against evasion, or explaining
away of stern duties and simple faiths. He concluded:

"No man more than I has ever loved the place where God's honour
dwells, or yielded truer allegiance to the teaching of His evident
servants. No man at this time grieves more for the damage of the
Church which supposes him her enemy, while she whispers
procrastinating _pax vobiscum_ in answer to the spurious kiss of
those who would fain toll curfew over the last fires of English
faith, and watch the sparrows find nest where she may lay her
young, around the altars of the Lord."

But if the Anglican Church refused him, the Roman Church was eager to
claim him. His interest in mediaevalism seemed to point him out as ripe
for conversion. Cardinal Manning, an old acquaintance, showed him
special attention, and invited him to charming _tete-a-tete_ luncheons.
It was commonly reported that he had gone over, or was going. But two
letters (of a later date) show that he was not to be caught. To a
Glasgow correspondent he wrote in 1887:

"I shall be entirely grateful to you if you will take the trouble
to contradict any news gossip of this kind, which may be disturbing
the minds of any of my Scottish friends. I was, am, and can be,
only a Christian Catholic in the wide and eternal sense. I have
been that these five-and-twenty years at least. Heaven keep me from
being less as I grow older! But I am no more likely to become a
Roman Catholic than a Quaker, Evangelical, or Turk."

To another, next year, he wrote:

"I fear you have scarcely read enough of 'Fors' to know the breadth
of my own creed or communion. I gladly take the bread, water, wine,
or meat of the Lord's Supper with members of my own family or
nation who obey Him, and should be equally sure it was His giving,
if I were myself worthy to receive it, whether the intermediate
mortal hand were the Pope's, the Queen's, or a hedge-side gipsy's."

At Coniston he was on friendly terms with Father Gibson, the Roman
Catholic priest, and gave a window to the chapel, which several of the
Brantwood household attended. But though he did not go to Church, he
contributed largely to the increase of the poorly-endowed curacy, and to
the charities of the parish. The religious socie