culating library ceased to come as
in the old days. The children of the neighbours offered me Sunday-school
books, taken from the precious store of the Methodist Sunday School
opposite our house. They seemed to me to be stupid beyond all words.
There was not one really good fight in them all, and after an honest
villain like Brian de Bois Guilbert, the bad people in these volumes
were very lacking in stamina. The "Rollo" books were gay compared to
them. I concluded that if anything on earth could make a child hate
religion, it was the perusal of these unreal books. My mother saw that I
had Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints" for Sunday reading. They were
equally dull; and other "Lives," highly recommended, were quite as
uninspiring as the little volumes from the Protestant library. They were
generally translated from the French, without vitality and without any
regard for the English idiom. I recall, through the mists, sitting down
one Sunday afternoon, to read "The Life of Saint Rose of Lima." As it
concerned itself with South America, it seemed to me that there might be
in it a good fighter or two; or, at least, somebody might cut off the
ear of a High Priest's servant as was done in the New Testament. But no,
I was shocked to read in the very beginning, that

so pure was the little Saint, even in her infancy, that when her
uncle, who was her godfather, kissed her after her baptism, a rosy
glow, a real blush of shame, overspread her countenance.

In that book I read no more that day!

But I discovered a volume I have never forgotten, which probably after
"The Young Marooners," had the greatest influence on me for a short
period. This was "Fabiola," by Cardinal Wiseman. There was good stuff in
it; it made me feel proud to be a Christian; it was full of thrills;
and it taught a lot about the archaeology of Rome, for it was part of
that excellent story. I have always looked on "Fabiola" as a very great
book. Then at Christmas, when my father gave me "The Last Days of
Pompeii," I was in a new world, not alien to the world of "Fabiola," but
in some way supplementary to it. This gift was accompanied by Washington
Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra." _Conspuez les livres des poup['e]es!_
What nice little story books, arranged for the growing mind, could
awaken such visions of the past, such splendid arabesques and trailing
clouds of glory as this book! Read at the right time, it makes the
pomegranate and the g