the houses, two boys
perishing in the flames. He tells us that this tragedy made an
impression on him, for it fell at a time in his life when "one begins to
fear death." Fear is a word which meets us even in the sprightly pages
of _A Spiritual AEneid_, a volume perhaps more fitly to be termed "An
AEsthetic Ramp."

He loved to dash out of college through the chill mists of a November
morning to worship with "the few righteous men" of the University in the
Chapel of Pusey House, which "conveyed a feeling, to me most
gratifying, of catacombs, oubliettes, Jesuitry, and all the atmosphere
of mystery that had long fascinated me."

He tells us how his nature "craved for human sympathy and support," and
speaks of the God whom he "worshipped, loved, and feared." He prayed for
a sick friend with "both hands held above the level of my head for a
quarter of an hour or more." He was a Universalist "recoiling from the
idea of hell." He believed in omens, though he did not always take them,
and was thoroughly superstitious. "The name of Rome has always, for me,
stood out from any printed page merely because its initial is that of my
own name." "At the time of my ordination I took a private vow, which I
always kept, never to preach without making some reference to Our Lady,
by way of satisfaction for the neglect of other preachers." He was a
youth when he took the vow of celibacy. He had the desire, he tells us,
to make himself thoroughly uncomfortable--as Byron would say, "to merit
Heaven by making earth a Hell." His superstitions were often ludicrous
even to himself. On one occasion in boyhood, he was trying to get a fire
to burn: "Let this be an omen," he said. "If I can get this fire to
burn, the Oxford Movement was justified."

A visit to Belgium hastened the inevitable decision of such a
temperament:

. . . the extraordinary devotion of the people wherever we went,
particularly at Bruges, struck home with a sense of immeasurable
contrast to the churches of one's own country. . . .

He did not apparently feel the moral contrast between Belgian and
English character.

. . . The tourist, I know, thinks of it as _Bruges la Morte_, but
then the tourist does not get up for early Masses; he would find
life then . . . he can at least go on Friday morning to the chapel of
the Saint Sang and witness the continuous stream of people that
flows by, hour after hour, to salute the relic and to mak