It was, I suppose, matter of common knowledge that Manning’s early and conspicuous ascendency in the counsels of the Papacy rested mainly on the intimacy of his personal relations with Pius IX.  But it was news to most of us that (if his biographer is right) he wished to succeed Antonelli as Secretary of State in 1876, and to transfer the scene of his activities from Westminster to Rome, and that he attributed the Pope’s disregard of his wishes to mental decrepitude.  The point, if true, is an important one, for his accession to the Secretaryship of State, and permanent residence in Rome, could not have failed to affect the development of events when, two years later, the Papal throne became vacant by the death of Pius IX.  But Deo aliter visum.  It was ordained that he should pass the evening of his days in England, and that he should outlive his intimacy at the Vatican and his influence on the general policy of the Church of Rome.  With the accession of Leo XIII. a new order began, and Newman’s elevation to the sacred purple seemed to affix the sanction of Infallibility to views and methods against which Manning had waged a Thirty Years’ War.  Henceforward he felt himself a stranger at the Vatican, and powerless beyond the limits of his own jurisdiction.

Perhaps this restriction of exterior activities in the ecclesiastical sphere drove the venerable Cardinal to find a vent for his untiring energies in those various efforts of social reform in which, during the last ten years of his life, he played so conspicuous a part.  If this be so, though Rome may have lost, England was unquestionably a gainer.  It was during those ten years that I was honoured by his friendship.  The storms, the struggles, the ambitions, the intrigues which had filled so large a part of his middle life lay far behind.  He was revered, useful, and, I think, contented in his present life, and looked forward with serene confidence to the final, and not distant, issue.  Thrice happy is the man who, in spite of increasing infirmity and the loss of much that once made life enjoyable, thus

    “Finds comfort in himself and in his cause,
    And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
    His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[3] 1903

V.

LORD HOUGHTON.

It is narrated of an ancient Fellow of All Souls’ that, lamenting the changes which had transformed his College from the nest of aristocratic idlers into a society of accomplished scholars, he exclaimed:  “Hang it all, sir, we were sui generis.”  What the unreformed Fellows of All Souls’ were among the common run of Oxford dons, that, it may truly (and with better syntax) be said, the late Lord Houghton was among his fellow-citizens.  Of all the men I have ever known he was, I think, the most completely sui generis.  His temperament and turn of