The department of religious literature, which is made up of histories of individual conversions to the faith, has received of late years many remarkable additions. This class of literature is regulated in its growth by very peculiar conditions, and must be judged according to exceptional laws. Its subject--the mysterious workings of grace in the soul--is such as rather to impose a reverent silence than to invite fulness of description; and so well do elevated souls appreciate the sacredness of such silence, that, except for interests of religion or justice, they are unwilling to bring before men those inner secrets of their hearts. But when the interests of religion or justice have convinced them that silence is no longer a duty, the history they consent to unfold can rarely be other than attractive and profitable, seeing that it describes a human soul's toilsome journey from error to truth. The very minuteness of personal detail, which in any other composition would be a blot, in this becomes a merit and a charm. Among the religious motives that not unfrequently dictate such a history, a spirit of thankfulness for the blessing of faith has its fitting place. The favoured soul looks out from the shelter of its Father's house upon the perilous path it has just traversed, and gratefully traces the Providence by which its wayward feet were guided where so many strayed to their ruin; just as the rescued mariner hangs up _ex voto_ a sketch of his frail bark in the moment of her peril, when, but for heaven's help, she would have foundered in the raging waves. Fruit of this pious gratitude is the narrative[5] we are now engaged upon; a narrative which will interest every Catholic, not only because it is the history of a remarkable conversion, but because of the light it incidentally throws on the present condition and future prospects of German Protestantism. But before we set ourselves to trace the steps of the process which led Dr. Laemmer from a many-faced Protestantism to the Catholic Church, it will be useful to make a few preliminary remarks. In Dr. Laemmer we have a witness who has had rare opportunities of becoming acquainted with the very highest and best forms which Protestantism has been enabled to assume in the country of its birth. He is, above all things, the child of the German Protestant universities. Of the twenty-six universities of which the learned nation is so proud, six or eight are Catholic,[6] four are mixed,[7] and the remaining fourteen are exclusively Protestant.[8]