Ground which Gibbon dashed over in a few months or weeks, the great Tractarian took ten years to traverse.

So different is the mystic from the positive mind.
Gibbon had no sooner settled his new religion than he resolved with a frankness which did him all honour to profess it publicly.

He wrote to his father, announcing his conversion, a letter which he afterwards described, when his sentiments had undergone a complete change, as written with all the pomp, dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr.
A momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised him, as he said, above all worldly considerations.

He had no difficulty, in an excursion to London, in finding a priest, who perceived in the first interview that persuasion was needless.

"After sounding the motives and merits of my conversion, he consented to admit me into the pale of the Church, and at his feet on the 8th of June 1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy." He was exactly fifteen years and one month old.