CHARLES WATERTON, ESQ. xxiii 



Here I will close the scene, and return home ; 

 otherwise, I shall never be able to bring this 

 continuation of my autobiography to its proposed 

 termination. I have had an adventure or two of 

 very singular import ; and I could wish to unfold 

 them to the eye of the curious reader, ere I bid 

 him adieu for ever, as far as an autobiography 

 is concerned. But, previously to their introduction 

 I would kindly ask permission to say a word on 

 the Gorham case: — an ecclesiastical affair which 

 has set all England by the ears, except us Catho- 

 lics, who are not in the least astonished at what has 

 taken place: — knowing, as we know by awful 

 precedents, that those who repudiate unity of 

 faith, have seldom any fixed faith to steer by. In 

 fact, surrounded on every side by the dense mist of 

 religious innovation, they can no longer discern 

 their long lost Northern star. 



I own, that I am not prone to revere the Church 

 by law established. Her persecutions and her 

 penal laws together, having doomed my family 

 long ago, to pick up its scanty food in the barren 

 pastures allotted to Pharoah's lean kine ; she 

 keeping possession of all the clover-meadows. 



Thus, kind-hearted and benevolent Protestants, 

 will make due allowance, if I give her a thrust, 

 from time to time in these memoirs. 



