310 PITTONIA. 
and 1850, carried the flower of the English Protestant clergy, 
and many of the aristocracy, back to the Mother Church of 
Rome, had touched our shores; and Major Le Conte's con- 
version was only one of many which took place in those 
years among the intelligent and cultivated higher classes in 
America ; including such men as the Protestant Bishop Ives, 
Rev. James Roosevelt Bayley, and the early friend and associ- 
ate of R. W. Emerson, Orestes Brownson, whom a great 
British critic, himself as far as possible from being a Catho- 
lic, pronounced “The master mind of America." The cele- 
brated Mrs. Seton of New York, who had still earlier become 
a Catholic, and who was the foundress, in America, of the 
Sisters of Charity, had been a relative of the Le Contes; 
and her wonderful life and personality had left their deep 
impression on all who had known her. 
The Rev. Mr. Bayley also, by birth, by fortune, and by men- 
tal and moral endowments conspicuous among the younger 
clergy of the Episcopal Church in New York, afterwards a 
convert to the Old Faith and successively Bishop of Newark 
and Archbishop of Baltimore, was not only a relative of 
Major Le Conte, but a particular friend; and the writer well 
remembers how, on his first call on his naturalist kinsman, 
after the ordination to Catholic priesthood had taken place, 
the latter, knowing how other Protestant relatives no longer 
gave him welcome, Major Le Conte, himself far above all the 
littlenesses of prejudice, assured him that at his home he 
would receive henceforward the same old weleome as before. 
At this time, 1844, Major Le Conte was just sixty years of 
age; and in 1846, choosing the great national holiday for 
this solemn, yet, to his heartily convinced mind and soul, most 
happy procedure, he was received into the Catholie Church 
on the morning of the 4th of July. In the last conversation 
I ever had with the late Cardinal McCloskey, he said he 
remembered distinetly the hour, and had himself been very 
deeply impressed by the sight of the venerable and military 
looking Huguenot as he entered the church leaning on the 
arm of his dear relative Father Bayley, advanced to the altar- 
