The house was empty and ready for a new guest, or rather the first guest.

If Gibbon anticipated the Tractarian movement intellectually, he was farther removed than the poles are asunder from the mystic reverent spirit which inspired that movement.

If we read the _Apologia_ of Dr.
Newman, we perceive the likeness and unlikeness of the two cases.

"As a matter of simple conscience," says the latter, "I felt it to be a duty to protest against the Church of Rome." At the time he refers to Dr.Newman was a Catholic to a degree Gibbon never dreamed of.

But in the one case conscience and heart-ties "strong as life, stronger almost than death," arrested the conclusions of the intellect.