Mr. Hope Scott's happiness, on the other hand, was the outcome of striking spiritual experiences. He had always been eminent for piety, and his views in connection with the Oxford Movement were well known. In 1851, after anxious deliberation, he became a Roman Catholic, and was received on the same day as Cardinal Manning. Shortly afterwards his wife followed him into the same communion. Mr. Hope Scott's religion was consequently a dominating influence at Abbotsford, permeating, as was said, the whole atmosphere of the place. 'The impression left by that most interesting and charming family,' writes a lady visitor in 1854, 'could never be effaced from my mind. It always seemed to me the most perfect type of a really Christian household, such as I never saw in the world before or since. A religious atmosphere pervaded the whole house, and not only the guests, but the servants, must, it seems to me, have felt its influence. Mr. Hope Scott was the beau-idéal of an English gentleman, and a Christian.' There were many guests at the later Abbotsford--a different order from those of an earlier day. Hither came John Henry Newman for five weeks during the winter of 1852-53, and again, for a fortnight, in 1872. 'We have a Chapel in the house, but no Chaplain,' wrote Hope Scott to Newman. 'You can say Mass at your own hour, observe your own ways in everything, and feel all the time perfectly at home.' Newman replied: 'It would be a pleasure to spend some time with you; and then I have ever had the extremest sympathy for Walter Scott, that it would delight me to see his place. When he was dying, I was saying prayers for him continually (whatever they were worth), thinking of Keble's words, "Think on the Minstrel as ye kneel."' And, again, we have Newman writing: 'I have ever had such a devotion, I may call it, to Walter Scott. As a boy, in the early summer mornings, I read "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering" in bed, when they first came out, before it was time to get up; and long before that--I think when I was eight years old--I listened eagerly to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which my mother and aunt were reading aloud. When he was dying I was continually thinking of him. Hope Scott was one of the Cardinal's 'intimates.' He was also on affectionate terms with Manning and Gladstone, to the latter of whom he dedicated his edition of Lockhart's 'Abridgment of the Life.'[31] Several passages in Morley's 'Gladstone' show how strong and genuine was the bond between them. 'Hope especially had influence over me more than, I think, any other person at any period of my life. My affection for him during those latter years before his change was, I may almost say, intense; there was hardly anything, I think, which he could have asked me to do, and which I would not have done.' When Hope Scott joined the Roman Church, Gladstone, the day after, made a codicil to his will, striking him out as executor. Friendship did not die, however, but only lived 'as it lives