Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/210

 of all churches professing Christianity." Having accomplished this unexpected but happy result, the Inquisition exacts from him a solemn vow that he will never reveal its secrets, and sends him back to England, where he loses no time in becoming an excellent Protestant. His sister Maria follows his example (her virtues have pointed steadfastly to this conclusion); but Catherine enters a convent, full of stone floors and idolatrous images, where she becomes a "tool" of the Jesuits, and says her prayers in Latin until she dies.

No wonder "Father Clement" went through twelve editions, and made its authoress as famous in her day as the authoress of "Elsie Dinsmore" is in ours. No wonder the Paddiford Lending Library revered its sterling worth. And no wonder it provoked from Catholics reprisals which Dr. Greenhill stigmatizes as "flippant." To-day it lives by virtue of half a dozen mocking lines in George Eliot's least-read story: but for a hundred years its progeny has infested the earth,—acrooked progeny, like Peer Gynt's, which can never be straightened into sincerity, or softened into good-will. "For first the Church