All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant ones. Surely there are some things which like politics are too serious to be taken quite seriously. _Surtout point de zele_ is not the saying of a cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and the more deep our feeling is about any matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard against _zele_ in this particular respect. There is but one step from the "earnest" to the "intense." When St. Paul told us to be all things to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say how far it was to be driven. I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I flirt just a trifle too much with "_il partito nero_," when I am in Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do. "These people," they say, "make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know their rough one. Knuckle under to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patronise you; have any individuality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way. '_Il prete_' they say, with a significant look, '_e sempre prete_.' For the future let us have professors and men of science instead of priests." I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal discords. I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their national character--a side which, in some respects, is no less interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more sympathetic. If I were an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side; as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper.