The truth is, however, that the trend of her steps toward the Roman Catholic Church, strengthened by her ivstlietic tjistes, was noticed in her earlier days before she had left her native lami ; and after her return from Italy to New York sho was still a coiiiiuunieaiit of Trinity Church, for weeks, as she said, 'in an agony of suspense,' engaged in discussions, oral and written, with the liev. John Henry Ilobart, then rector of Trinity, afterward Bishop of the Pioceso of New York, and Archbishop Carroll, of Baltimore, iu regard to the main principles of Protestantism. At that earlier perioil, her cousin, Ann Bayley, of Pelham, only eight years younger than hereelf, was living in the environment of the same religious atmosphi're, keenly sympathetic, constiiiitly interchanging sentiments as well as visits.

" The leading idea that then engaged the thoughts of those two cousins pertained not so much to the emotive nature as to the intellectual ; for a main subject of discussion emphasi/ed in the chief pulpits of New York at that day, Wiis the relation of the sacraments to pereonal sjilvation. At that point the life course of the two cousins diverged. The allirmation, sometimes ehxpiently argued, that the sacraments, adniiuititercu through a regular priestly succession, are the divinely apjiointed channels through wliicdi saving grace Hows forth from the fountain of life into the human soul, took the strongest possible hold upon the spirit nature of the elder cou.-iin, calling forth, even then, painful doubts over a suggested <iuestion, namely this : ' As the Anglican church recognizes the perfect validity of the Roman Catholic sacraments, while on the other hand, the older Roman church has never recognized the validity of the ,\ngli<an administration, am I not required, by a proper regard for my own soul's peace and safely, to place myself upon the ground that re mains to both sides undisputed '! ' Strange as it may seem to many that her early faith should have faltered before such a question, from that starting-point of thought she advanced in due time, after her return from Italy, through 'an agony of suspense' to the positions taken in her printed correspondence with Bishop Ilobart and the Primate of Baltimore.