I. OF AGE 251

gate, or vale, or ridge, which marked the separation of Protestant from the benighted Catholic cantons; and it was rare if the first or second field and cottage, beyond the border, did not too clearly justify their exulting,-though also indignant and partly sorrowful,-enforcement upon me of the natural consequences of Popery.

9. The third reason for my strength of feeling at this time was a curious one. In proportion to the delight I felt in the ceremonial of foreign churches,¹ was my conviction of the falseness of religious sentiment founded on these enjoyments. I had no foolish scorn of them, as the proper expressions of the Catholic Faith; but infinite scorn of the lascivious sensibility which could change its beliefs because it delighted in these, and be “piped into a new creed by the whine of an organ pipe.”² So that alike my reason, and romantic pleasure, on the Continent, combined to make a bitter Protestant of me;-yet not a malicious nor ungenerous one. I never suspected Catholic priests of dishonesty, nor doubted the purity of the former Catholic Church. I was a Protestant Cavalier, not Protestant Round-head,-entirely desirous of keeping all that was noble and traditional in religious ritual, and reverent to the existing piety of the Catholic peasantry. So that the “diabolic fire” which I wanted trampled out, was only the corrupt Catholicism which rendered the vice of Paris and the dirt of Savoy possible; and which I was quite right in thinking it the duty of every Christian priest to attack, and end the schism and scandal of it.

10. Osborne, on the contrary, was a practical Englishman, of the shrewdest, yet gentlest type; keenly perceptive of folly, but disposed to pardon most human failings as little more. His ambition was restricted to the walls of Christ Church; he was already the chiefly trusted aid of the old Dean; probably, next to him, the best Greek scholar in

¹ [The MS. adds: “See above my note on the difference between Beresford Chapel and Rouen Cathedral;” pp. 132-133.]

² [Ruskin quotes (from memory) from his note on “Romanist Modern Art,” in Appendix 12 to vol. i. of The Stones of Venice: see Vol. IX. p. 437.]

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