ial was coming on him. The reader has to be told
that there was at that time a system of espionage prosecuted by various
well-meaning men, who thought it would be doing the University a service
to point out such of its junior members as were what is called
"papistically inclined." They did not perceive the danger such a course
involved of disposing young men towards Catholicism, by attaching to
them the bad report of it, and of forcing them farther by inflicting on
them the inconsistencies of their position. Ideas which would have lain
dormant or dwindled away in their minds were thus fixed, defined,
located within them; and the fear of the world's censure no longer
served to deter, when it had been actually incurred. When Charles
attended the tea-party at Freeborn's he was on his trial; he was
introduced not only into a school, but into an inquisition; and since he
did not promise to be a subject for spiritual impression, he was
forthwith a subject for spiritual censure. He became a marked man in the
circles of Capel Hall and St. Mark's. His acquaintance with Willis; the
questions he had asked at the Article-lecture; stray remarks at
wine-parties--were treasured up, and strengthened the case against him.
One time, on coming into his rooms, he found Freeborn, who had entered
to pay him a call, prying into his books. A volume of sermons, of the
school of the day, borrowed of a friend for the sake of illustrating
Aristotle, lay on his table; and in his bookshelves one of the more
philosophical of the "Tracts for the Times" was stuck in between a
Hermann _De Metris_ and a Thucydides. Another day his bedroom door was
open, and No. 2 of the tea-party saw one of Overbeck's sacred prints
pinned up against the wall.

Facts like these were, in most cases, delated to the Head of the House
to which a young man belonged; who, as a vigilant guardian of the purity
of his undergraduates' Protestantism, received the information with
thankfulness, and perhaps asked the informer to dinner. It cannot be
denied that in some cases this course of action succeeded in frightening
and sobering the parties towards whom it was directed. White was thus
reclaimed to be a devoted son and useful minister of the Church of
England; but it was a kill-or-cure remedy, and not likely to answer with
the more noble or the more able minds. What effect it had upon Charles,
or whether any, must be determined by the sequel; here it will suffice
to relate intervi