I know that many of my friends on both sides looked upon me as a latitudinarian, but my conviction has always been that we could not be broad enough. They looked upon me as wishing to keep on good terms with high and low and broad, and I made no secret of it, that I thought I could understand Pusey as well as Stanley, and assign to each his proper place. Stanley was of course more after my own heart than Pusey, but Pusey too was a man who interested me very much. I saw that he might become a great power whether for good or for evil in England. He was, in fact, a historical character, and these were always the men who interested me. He was fully aware of his importance in England, and the great influence which his name exercised. That influence was not always exercised in the right way, so at least it seemed to me, particularly when it was directed against such friends of mine as Kingsley, Froude, or Jowett. Once, I remember, when he had come to my house, I ventured to tell him that he could not have meant what he had said in declaring that the God worshipped by Frederic Maurice was not the same as his God. Curious to say, he relented, and admitted that he had used too strong language. To me everything that was said of God seemed imperfect, and never to apply to God Himself but only to the idea which the human mind had formed of Him. To me even the Hindu, if he spoke of Brahman or Krishna, seemed to have aimed at the true God, in spite of the idolatrous epithets which he used; then how could a man like Frederic Maurice be said to have worshipped a different God, considering that we all can but feel after Him in the dark, not being able to do more than exclude all that seems to us unworthy of Deity? A very important element in the ecclesiastical views of some of my friends was, no doubt, the artistic. If Johnson leant towards Rome, it was the more ornate and beautiful service that touched and attracted him. I sat near to him in St. Giles’ Church; he told me what to do and what not to do during service. In spite of the Prayer-book, it is by no means so easy as people imagine to do exactly the right thing in church, and I had of course to learn a number of prayers and responses by heart. To me the service, as it was in my parish church, seemed already too ornate, accustomed as I had been to the somewhat bare and cold service in the Lutheran Church at Dessau. But Johnson constantly complained about the monotonous and mechanical performances of the clergy. He had a strong feeling for all that was beautiful and impressive in art, and he wanted to see the service of God in church full both of reverence and beauty.