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The number is not, however, large in proportion to the number of English priests. The circumstances of their education, literary restrictions, and subsequent occupation are not of a nature to unsettle their minds very seriously. But a still more serious circumstance is the peculiarly painful nature of a breach with the Church of Rome. A breach with any life-long communion is attended with much pain, which is still more intense in the case of a minister of religion who finds himself impelled to that violent wrench of his affections which conscience occasionally dictates: he has formed definite habits of thought and of life and innumerable attachments whose breaking off is accompanied with a pain akin to the physical pain of dislocation and the wrenching asunder of nerves and fibres. For in the Church of Rome, at least, secession means farewell to the past—farewell to whatever honour, whatever esteem and affection may have been gained by a life of industry and merit. The decree of the Church goes forth against the ‘apostate’: he is excommunicated, cursed in this life and the next, and socially ostracised, if not worse. The many, the great crowd of admirers, listen to every idle tale that is hatched against him; the few, whose moral and humane instincts are too deep to be thus perverted, can but offer a distant and stealthy sympathy. He is cast out to recommence life, socially and financially, in middle age: perhaps homeless, friendless, and resourceless. A description