respectable Presbyterian minister, of the same age with Francis Baker, and an ardent disciple of the school of John Henry Newman. At the time of his baptism, Mr. Baker was only acquainted with church principles as they were taught by Dr. Wyatt, who was an old-fashioned High Churchman. The intercourse which he had with Mr. Lyman was the principal occasion of introducing him to an acquaintance with the Oxford movement, into which he very soon entered with his whole mind and heart. In 1842, Mr. Lyman was sent to St. James's College, near Hagerstown, where he remained several years, receiving orders in the interval. During this time, Mr. Baker kept up a frequent and most confidential correspondence with him, which is full of liveliness and humor in its earlier stages, but becomes more grave and serious as both advanced nearer to the time of their ordination. It continued during the entire period of their ministry in the Episcopal Church, and during the whole subsequent life of Mr. Baker, closing with a very playful letter written by the latter, a few days before his last illness. In one of these letters, he acknowledges his obligations to Mr. Lyman as the principal instrument of making him acquainted with Catholic principles, in these warm and affectionate words: "I do not know whether you are aware of the advantage I derived from you in the earlier part of our acquaintance, by reason of your greater familiarity with the Catholic system as exhibited in the _Anglican_ Church. {18} The influence you exerted was of a kind of which I can hardly suppose you to have been conscious; yet I am sure you will be gratified to think it was effectual, as I believe, to fix me more firmly in the system for which I had long entertained so profound a reverence and affection. These are benefits which I cannot forget, and which (if there were not other reasons of which I need not speak) must always keep a place for you in the heart of your unworthy friend." The nature of the later correspondence between these two friends, and their mutual influence on each other, will appear later in this narrative. There are friendships which are formed in heaven, and in looking back upon that which grew up between these two young men of congenial spirit, and in which I was also a sharer in a subordinate degree, I cannot but admire the benignant ways of Divine Providence, by which those strands which afterward bound our existence together so closely were first interwoven. I had myself met Mr. Lyman, some years before this, and felt the charm of his glowing and enthusiastic advocacy of principles which were just beginning to germinate in my own mind. Soon after Lyman's removal to Hagerstown, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Baker, a circumstance which the latter mentions in his next letter to his friend in these words, which I trust I may be pardoned for quoting--