One or two of the salient points of his character come out in a few extracts we shall produce from the journal now. He says, on leaving Rome--"How delightful, and yet how melancholy, was my walk about those dear rooms at the Vatican; after next Thursday I believe I am never to see them again, so farewell to them now." This illustrates his better nature; he was very affectionate, and could love whatever was really worth loving; he was not very demonstrative of this feeling, but when it came to leave-taking, he had to give vent to it. A peculiar caste of his mind was to listen to every proposition, and weigh the reasons adduced to support it. If they were unanswerable, he at once admitted it, and, if possible, tested it by experience. This was the great key to his conversion and subsequent life. In conversation, perhaps, with a medical friend, he was told that it was far the best way, whilst on the move in travelling, neither to eat nor drink. This was supported by reasons drawn from the digestive principles, and so forth. He thought it was well proved, and could find no valid objection against it, so he determined to try it, and travelled from Rome to Sienna without tasting a morsel for forty-two hours, and says in his journal--"It is much the best way in travelling." In Florence we have other tokens of the regret with which he parts from his friends; and in the same page a very different feeling on parting with some Franciscans. These "entertained him uncommonly well for mendicants," and showed him all their treasures of art and piety with the greatest kindness; yet it did not prevent him calling them "lazy old monks" when they let him away at three o'clock in the morning. {81} He walks about the country a good deal, and finds it pleasant, "as the common people here are much more conversable than ours." This striking difference between a Catholic and a Protestant peasantry is patent to the most superficial observer. The poor Irish, French, or Italian labourer, who can neither read nor write, is quite at his ease with the merchant or the noble. He will have his joke and his laugh, very often at the expense of his superior, and never outstep the bounds of due respect. He is light-hearted and gay everywhere, and the exact opposite of the English navvy.