The first thing you will want to know is how I am getting on in the Church. I don't remember whether I ever wrote to you from Nice or not; but that, if I had, could only have been so soon after my reception as to make it almost valueless. I have not been received a year, so I suppose what I say now is not worth very much. I am, thank God, _very_ comfortable. I had, no doubt, a first flush of fervour and enthusiasm, but that soon passed away, and I became almost immediately quite a humdrum Catholic. The practices, as you know, were already familiar to me; and I knew also a great many, if not all, of the practical drawbacks, of which florid figured music and appropriated and paid-for sittings in church are (to me) the most distasteful. Florid forms of devotion and piety have never appealed to me any more than florid music; and in that respect I am (so I am told) considered like the slowest type of old English Catholicism. The old-fashioned "Garden of the Soul" is my book, except when visiting some very holy shrine, when I find {78} myself able to use occasionally the "Prayers of St. Gertrude," or at least some of them. I am perfectly at peace in the Church, and have been. My taste for controversy has gone, and for theological inquiry also, to great extent. I think that when one has once entered the Church--well, one has jumped over the cliff and reached the bottom, safe and sound it is true, but in a condition that renders restlessness impossible and controversy absolutely superfluous. I left Nice, as you are aware, at the beginning of February, went to Rome for a week, to be confirmed by the Holy Father, and then continued the pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Jerusalem. I performed the last ceremonies in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Victories in Paris about the beginning of June, and returned to England. I had kept as much as possible out of the way of letters and newspapers, but had inevitably heard much that was very disagreeable--all sorts of lying stories, for instance, deliberately and maliciously circulated about me--and I arrived here in a state of very uncomfortable anticipation. However, I found everything very much better than I anticipated. Every one seemed glad to see me, and I received much kindness from all the people about. Religious matters were easily arranged; and though large mobs of people assembled to see me go to Mass, they were disappointed, as I had got a little oratory ready in the house, which is served every day by the Fathers of Charity. And I have special permission from the Pope for myself, my "familiars" and guests to satisfy the obligation in it on every day in the year. We have here between 9,000 and 10,000 Catholics, who are of course delighted at what has happened.