Of Milnes’s religious opinions it is difficult to give any positive account. His family had been Unitarian; at college he became an Evangelical; soon afterwards he fell under the influence of Irving, whom he proclaimed to be ‘the apostle of the age.’ Then, during his residence in Italy, as we have already mentioned, he chose Dr Wiseman for his intimate friend, and the higher Roman Catholic clergy had hopes of his conversion. ‘Mezzofanti,’ wrote one of his friends in 1832, ‘is full of hopes that you will return to the bosom of her whom Carlyle calls “the slain mother”.’ But, during this same period, while passing through what he calls ‘the twilight of his mind,’ he was the friend of Sterling and Maurice and Thirlwall, under whose influence he was hardly likely to submit to an infallible Church. He himself said that he was prevented from joining the Church of Rome by the uprising of a Catholic school in the Church of England. To this movement, as we have seen, he was deeply attached, and both spoke and wrote in its defence. In one of his commonplace books he called himself a Puseyite sceptic; sometimes he said he was a crypto-Catholic, and to the last he never entirely shook off the impressions of his youth. But Mr Reid is probably right in describing him as ‘a tolerant, liberal-minded man, apt to look at religion from many different points of view.’ We are not aware that he ever took part in any directly religious movement, or ever declared his allegiance to the Church of England except as a political organization. Partly from a love of paradox, partly from a habit of looking round a question rather than directly at it, he would have had something to say in defence of almost any system of religion, while his unfeigned charity would induce him to adopt that which recognized most fully the claims of suffering humanity. Lord Houghton died at Vichy, August 11, 1885. He had been in failing health for some time, but the end was sudden and unexpected. Only a few hours before it came he had been entertaining a mixed company at the _table d’hôte_ by the brilliancy and variety of his conversation. It might almost be said that he died, as he had lived, in society.