ther I am not justified in this assertion, as it respects the Methodists? And I And I may observe, that if the Methodists were asked whether or not I had acted thus toward the Roman Catholics in the Book of the Church, they would answer the one appeal as fairly, and with as little hesitation as you would do the other. The English Romanists will proudly acknowledge you for their advocate, (whatever may be thought by the Ultra-Montanists,) as one in whose hands their cause will lose nothing in strength, while it gains all that can be given to it by the most winning urbanity and apparent candour. Nor shall I be disowned by those members of the Church of England, who understand its real interests and its inestimable worth.

I am sure it will not displease you, Sir, if I notice one other point of conformity, in which the coincidence is as exact as our opinions upon the great question at issue are opposite to each other. So far as in either case we may have been biassed by circumstances in forming those opinions, the circumstances have been precisely similar. You, Sir, grew up with feelings of reverential affection towards a near kinsman, who well deserved the respect and honour which you have so ably paid to his memory. Your uncle, Mr. Alban Butler, was employed on the

English mission; he was a man of letters, holding firmly the doctrines of his Church, but partaking no more of its intolerance than its tenets absolutely prescribe: and while he officiated as a minister of that Church in a land of Protestants, he lived in charity with those whom he believed to be lost in error, and enjoyed the friendship of some of the most eminent and illustrious members of the establishment to which he was opposed. One to whom I stand in the same degree of relationship, was minister of the English Church in a Roman Catholic country; he was not, indeed, employed on an English mission, for the Romanists never allow to others that liberty which they claim for themselves. During my childhood, Mr. Herbert Hill was chaplain to the British factory at Porto; after a few years he removed, in the same capacity, to Lisbon, and continued to reside there till, upon the occupation of that city by the French, he was driven to his native land. Like your venerable kinsman, Sir, he obtained the respect of those among whom he dwelt, (though he had far stronger prejudices to overcome,) and kept up a literary and friendly intercourse with the most distinguished of the Portugueze prelates. Both you and I, Sir, have examined and decided for ourselves; the deci

sion has been made in the best exercise of a free and upright judgement; and yet we may both acknowledge that it may have been confirmed, though not brought about, by feelings of which you know the value and the strength. Your kinsman, of whom you never speak without love and reverence, is gone to his reward. Mine is yet living in a good old age: to him quicquid sum, quicquid futurus postea, adceptum fero; and I account it not among the least of those advantages which I have derived through his means, that by residing with him for awhile in a Roman Catholic kingdom, I have seen what the Roman Catholic system of religion is;... seen it, not as it is represented by those of its advocates who write for Protestant readers, but as it is in practice,... as it is in itself, and in its consequences.

The opportunity thus presented to me was not lost. In what manner my attention was first particularly excited to the subject I will venture to relate in this place. To a person of your Catholic pursuits and acquirements, (I use the epithet in its best and genuine sense,) nothing that relates to literary history will be uninteresting; and in this case the impulse which my mind received, has, in its results, called forth the exertion of yours. We shall

come presently to our polemics. In none of its points shall I shrink from the controversy. I have more to attack than to defend; more to amplify and enforce my statements, than to retract or qualify them. Even then I may sometimes diverge into topics where we have a common interest and no discordant views. And now, while I am prologizing with the freedom, and something of the feeling, of friendly correspondence, you will, I am persuaded, not unwillingly, permit me to indulge in reminiscences which bear upon the subject of these letters, and the things which have placed us in opposition to each other.

When I was a school-boy at Westminster, I frequented the house of a school-fellow, who has continued till this day to be one of my most intimate and dearest friends. The house was so near Dean's Yard, that it was hardly considered as being out of my prescribed bounds; and I had free access to the library, a wellstored and pleasant room, within a few yards of that spot where the old Dialogue concerning the Exchequer was written, Anno vicesimo tertio regni Regis Henrici Secundi; and in like manner, juxta fluvium Tamesem, looking over the river. There many of my truant hours were delightfully spent in reading Picart's Re

ligious Ceremonies. The book impressed my imagination strongly; and before I left school, I had formed the intention of exhibiting all the more prominent and poetical forms of mythology which have at any time obtained among mankind, by making each the groundwork of an heroic poem. Keeping this intention always in view, while I disciplined myself in the art of poetry by extensive reading and assiduous practice, I omitted no opportunity of preparing for its execution, by laying up such materials as I had the fortune to meet with; and upon this project I was brooding when, in the winter of 1795-6, I accompanied my uncle, Mr. Hill, from England to Lisbon, taking Madrid in the way. During our stay in the Spanish metropolis, we strolled one morning into the cloisters of the new Franciscan Convent, where there was a series of pictures representing the whole history of St. Francis: they were good pictures, and an artist was employed in making drawings from them, probably for the engraver. You need not be reminded, Sir, how little the history of the Romish Saints is known in Protestant countries. I knew nothing more of St. Francis at that time than what I had read in Mosheim some three or four years before: and when the whole portentous story was thus at once pre