Yet the fact that religious differences did begin between the two brothers very early in life has been proved beyond all question. Proved also is it that religious discussions were of constant occurrence between them, and that while J. H. Newman had always a strange leaning to Churchmanship, Frank Newman's religious tendencies drew him strongly towards dissent and Unitarianism. I think the latter mentions in his _Phases of Faith_ that when he first came to college he found his brother had hung up a picture of Our Lady in his younger brother's room, which he at once removed, and refused to have on the walls. The following letter is to Rev. J. K. Tucker; in it he describes himself as a "Conscious Christian" "at the age of fourteen." But he has often described himself as holding Christianity _without_ Christ:-- "I hold firmly in memory, that in Easter of 1836 I wished to conduct my _bride_ to Oxford, and introduce her there to my mother and two sisters-- in those Coaching days we came from Bristol and Cheltenham en route to Oxford. _I_ did not plan the thought of staying a night at your father's house, in which I suppose _you and your wife_ were living. No doubt the scheme was planned _by my wife_ to meet _her friend_. The winter of our marriage had been one of wild snow; and the following Easter was alike untimely. I just remember the fact of your kind hospitality fifty-four and a half years ago, and the snow around us. In that visit to my mother (the last time I saw her), my young wife caught inflammation of the lungs, which I did not perceive or understand--she was so cruelly bled and cupped, that I think she never recovered it. "It is very kind of you to keep alive in your heart the friendship of the two ladies. I perhaps ought to state that about two and a half years after the death of that wife in 1876 I married her ... friend.... Else I must have given up housekeeping, and know not into what family I could have gone. My second wife is nineteen years my junior, yet in walking, not at all my equal, but in affectionate care of me inestimable." In June, 1892, he writes to J. H. Tucker, Esq.:--"I have not heard whether your father, like me, is favoured by life continued, but I venture to send a copy of my hymns.... To-day I have received a letter and book in _Bengali_ from a believer in _Theosophy_, supposing me to be one of them! Hence, I was not too early in telling my friends that since _at the age of fourteen_ I became a Conscious Christian, no unbelief has made my hymns less precious, _mutato saltem nomine_.... My change more than fifty years ago was on Historical arguments mainly."