"But now we must return to the Catholic Faith. The main object of this memoir being to trace the steps of my {72} progress towards Catholicity, it would be expected that the period of my residence for a whole year in Catholic countries must be most interesting. Indeed it is wonderful that this year of my life should have been, as it appears to me to have been, quite neutral in its effects. I certainly made no progress towards my present faith. This would not be extraordinary; for how many Protestants by their travels abroad not only make no progress towards Catholicity, but are made its violent enemies. But, undoubtedly, this was the effect produced on me. It seems that at this time I was under the influence of altogether other objects and notions from any connected with religion. What I sought was, first, my own pleasure--next, only general information; what I was chiefly controlled by was human respect. Having no care at all about religion in any form, the question of which was the right form never troubled me, and so the observations which I could not help making on the Catholic religious practices which I saw, were very superficial. It might be interesting to transcribe a few passages from my journal which show what was my mind. "It is remarkable how easily one's mind takes in and rests contented in the belief of false and prejudicial representations of things. I never had had much pains taken with me to set me against the Catholic religion; but though I knew nothing of what it was, I rested in the conviction that it was full of superstition, and, in fact, as good as no religion at all. I never opened my mind all the time I was abroad to the admission of any idea but this; and so I looked on all the Catholic ceremonies which I saw, in this perverted light. I did not fall in the way of anyone to set me right; for I was contented to go on in the stream of the English society with which almost all the towns in Italy were filled, and if any really zealous exemplary Catholics are sometimes mingled with them, they do not find it available or prudent to introduce the mention of religion; while there will be always some who have no objection to seek to please them by encouraging their prejudices, which they do effectually by telling stories--some true, perhaps, some obviously false--of the Priests and Religious. Such a person, {73} who bore the title of Abbate, and therefore must have been professedly a true Catholic, we fell in with at Milan; he assisted my father in his search after curious books. I remember some of his conversations, and I find notice in my journal of his dining with us, and being 'very amusing in some stories about the Catholic processions.' The impression on my mind was that the whole system of religion which we saw was mere formality, people being taught to content themselves