Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out; and that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time, while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I speak without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us, considering that in the charges you bring the only two English writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in age than myself.  I put aside the Archbishop of course, because of his office.  These two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once from their character and from their ability.  In their respective lines they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they deserve the influence they possess.  One is still in the vigour of his powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds.  It is pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you rest on them as authorities?  Because the one was “a popular writer”; but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin?  And as to our other friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, displayed on the vantage ground of the historic Dublin Review, fully account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the Pope’s infallibility?  Our silence as regards their writings is very intelligible; it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love and respect.  But the plain fact is this—­they came to the Church, and have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for English Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who have a real title to such an office.

And he appeals from them, as authorities, to a list of much more sober and modest writers, though, it may be, the names of all of them are not familiar to the public.  He enumerates as the “chief authors of the passing generation,” “Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr. Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, Mr. Flanagan.”  If these well-practised and circumspect veterans in the ancient controversy are not original and brilliant, at least they are safe; and Dr. Newman will not allow the flighty intellectualism which takes more hold of modern readers to usurp their place, and for himself he sturdily and bluffly declines to give up his old standing-ground for any one:—­