'To tell the truth, I have been to him already.'

'You do not mean it! And what did he tell you?'

'What the rest of the world does--hearsays.'

'But did you not find him most kind?'

'I went to him to be comforted and guided. He received me as a
criminal. He told me that my first duty was penitence; that as long
as I lived the life I did, he could not dare to cast his pearls
before swine by answering my doubts; that I was in a state incapable
of appreciating spiritual truths; and, therefore, he had no right to
tell me any.'

'And what did he tell you?'

'Several spiritual lies instead, I thought. He told me, hearing me
quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they were all
Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included Lange and
Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a German book in his
life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all
he knew of him was from a certain review in the Quarterly. He
called Boehmen a theosophic Atheist. I should have burst out at
that, had I not read the very words in a High Church review the day
before, and hoped that he was not aware of the impudent falsehood
which he was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection
to anything he said (for, after all, he talked on), he told me to
hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which Catholic Church? He
said the English. I asked him whether it was to be the Church of