I approach this part of my subject with very great hesitation and reluctance. In the first place, it is not pleasant, after having said many things in praise of an institution to which one is warmly attached, to be obliged to say anything in strong and positive dispraise of it. But there is a much stronger reason for this feeling on my part. The very fact of a man's writing upon matters of religion and morality looks like his setting up a claim to be a particularly moral and religious man. Any approach to such a claim may well provoke severe scrutiny, and there are some direct confessions as well as indirect admissions in the course of this book which will not bear any very rigid test. In admitting this I do not allude to any places where the Latex Lyaeus is spoken of as an ordinary beverage and a promoter of festivity ; in other words, where drinking wine is mentioned, and not mentioned as a sin, although well aware that many good people would consider me, as a necessary consequence of this, little better than an infidel, and totally disqualified from giving evidence on ethical or theological points.