RECOLLECTIONS OF CARDINAL MANNING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 28, 12 November 1897, Page 27

RECOLLECTIONS OF CARDINAL MANNING.

(By Auuuly de Vere, in the Aw liana).

(Ci'iit/ina d.) Looking back on the career of an old friend a( his departure, after the question as to how far that career was a noble one. there comes another — namely, how i.ir it was a h.ippy one. Cardinal Manning's was. as far as I cm ]udue, a sin^uhuly happy one ; not in the sen-e of having ]ia 1 nuunlul.l enjoyment*, or of having escaped sev< re afflictions, but in a higher ss L >nse ot the word happi° ness-. His lite had not, I think, brought in many joys from many sources ; yet it had conferred on him m eh joy fro'ii a lew. but these the higlu-t. Hi-, hiippine-s wa s almost wholly of a spiritual order, iithor directly or indirectly. He h.ul a Oeipk^ faith, and one that *o penetrated all his faculties that it bmu_;ht the whole of his life in a unity. Souse Mould have said that his nature was not as wide as it wdo high. It was not as wide in the sense of being, like that of a »reat dramatist, in strong sympathy with many "things of a very contrasted character, scm:e high and sonic low ; but it was w ide in the sense of seeing the same clear li»ht reflected from many remote objects; and for him it wii^not ti ue that only ''the low sun makes the colour." lie had, like Cardinal Newman, a keen sense of the humorous ; though the general character of his mind was a severe seriousness. lie had a great lo\ eot music, though in church he could tolerate only ascetic music. The other arts^gave him a deep delight also ; but only in those austerer forms of them in which their highest as well as their earliest specimens had bravely challenged the human heart, as.d but slightly the mere senses; and when, in early Christian days, the eaina- of Cimabue and Giotto seemed to have caught the '•an d shadow.- flung from the ensanguined walls and vaulted roofs of the catacombs, and to have glorified them. When we visited to/ct r er the Italian galleries he passed by, as if he did not see them, the pictures of the later schools, round which the larger groups collected, and gazed long upon a

Fra Angelico with a gaze that reminded me of Leigh Hunt's fine remark, " A gooa picture is a window. Through it we look beyond it— far down long vistas of thought." His friends scolded him for this exclusiveness ; they did not know that we see rnuny things only throug-h blindnesß to many things. i The love of literature was in Manning as strong as the love of | art, while to many it seemed to restrict it&elf within as narrow limits in one sense, but wide in another. Ilia intellect was a sternly consistent one ; and therefore whatever was opposed, not in form only, but in spirit also, to his strongest convictions or to his deepest sympathies found in him no acceptance. The lesser merits seemed to him only to wage war on the greater. On the other hand in what he admired he found more to admire than ordinary admirers find in their wider range. In the case of p-igan writers he could make large allowance fur the mode in which Uiebubjeoto they u'oated must have presented themselves from the pjgan point of view. He did not believe that religion required that every book should be didactic ; but, again, he could not forgive those who, in Christian ages and Christian lands, wrote in a strain such as the nobler writers of pagan days would have regarded as a sin, not only against decerum but against letters. Among our later poets 1 think that the two whom he admired most were Alfred Tennyson and Henry Taylor. Of my father's " Mary Tudor " he wrote thus, se\eral jvara after its publication :—"lt: — "It is work of a mind high, large and &ood : conception and continuity and intellectual purpose throughout. As to beauty, it is less the beauty of the eye and ear — though there is much of that also —than of the ideal and the spiritual world. And in this its beauty is very great. This is the result of one hasty reading ; but I shall not only read it again, but I feel that I have" one more book that I can read again and again, as I can ' The Life ot St. Thomas ot Canterbury." Perhaps my feeling may be tinged by sympathy and theJilola -L'eclrsiaxttcu. But Gladstone's is not : and we agree in considering '' Mary Tudor " the finest drama since Shakespeare's time. It is to me one more evidence of the injustice or the incapacity of readers and critics that it should be unknown."

No one can read Manning's numerous volumes, especially those of his later ycarri, without perceiving from the btyle alone — w hich. as an Anglican bishop, Dr. Charles Harris, once remarked to me, hud " edges as keen as the edges of a knife,'" — that style niu&t have been with him a careful study. To that study 1 heard him allude only once, and then in terais very characteristic : '• In my youth, and when beginning to write, I took great pains with my style. 1 am ashamed of this it was unworthy." Walter Savage Landor would not have approved that opinion, lie took greater pains himself and might have replied : •• Your humility tramples on the pride of Plato with a greater pride." Or he might have answered : " You are wrong. Bacon, whin he published his gi\at wuilr, prefixed t) it the words : ' These were the thoughts ot Francis liaooji. 0: which that posterity should become posses -ed he deemed to be their advantage. High thoughts are a trust tor the benefit of others, whose attention, in the absence of a befitting garb lor them, they do not adequately challenge.'' Landor was proud not only of his stylo, but of ihe pains which he to )k with it. -That cue 'he said, -should be only in part concealed; l>ght touches of the chi-el should remain on the marble."' Ntwii-an ali-o wrote with extraordinary care, but his only care was to bj plain.

I do not think th,.t beautiful scenery contributed cm h to the enjoyment eitlur ot Manning or Newman; and bnth oi them. I feel sure, would ha\e agreed with Sir Ilei ry 'I ay lor in prel.irn.g the wide plains and rich vail js ot Italy, boulered by majo-tio mountains with giaeehil 'outline-) — mountains that knew haw to keep their distance— to the Alpine p aks and paeipn.es. I tool: him once to .Monk Coni-'o-i, the Lxqni.site abode of J\lr. md Mrs. G-arth. Man-hall , aud one of tne lowliest regions in England's lake country. I'.ut, he seemed to look ou its mountains, and those about Wiudennere, as he locked on tneir poet. Wordswoith — tli.it ;s. w ith respect, entire > t p;>rov,il. and a re wmably warm regatd. rather Liiaii with enthusiasm T'w H<), ,he M km enjoy, d were tl.o ein w inch he could mist effectually L.bour for his fel'low-n.cn. at d i-pecialh for their moi.ii li.tius.-. in such L.bours he was indefatigable — niy, they seeim d lather to su-tam his .strength than i \'uaust it. He had a womli rhil g r t t tor ;.<imitii-i ration . <-Jl hiduties, never bciu.ur m a huny ; in,. in g out the aptitudes ot those about him and using tin in to the best ad\ant.ge, When he had toilul all day. to pivach in the ovinii'g u,i- a )ut to him ; it w .nit simply thinking aloud, oiten an easier thing than thinking m silei-ce.

lie was as much a spiritual utilitarian as if lie had be'on a Jesuit. When a gentleman of great munificence one pionn-ed to build a catlicdral tor him at the cost ot C^ttu^Oi). I can imagine his replying, careles-ly, "AIL right " ; but ho raided, atter arduous efforts, C 2(i.(KJO to provide Catholic schools in place of seeulai SJhools for the children ot hi'- diojeK 1 .

Manning was not an cntlrjsia-iic man, and it was not fiom imaginative excitements that his religious happiness was diawn. Neither did it come to him chiefly because submission to iru'ientio authority had led him out of the '• strife of tongues '; for lie was neither an indolent nor a nervous man Soon after he bee uuc a Catholic I heard that one ot his old Anglican friends had written to him asking what he had found in Catholicism more than he had previously pos-cssed ; and that he had answered : '• Ke-t and security." or some words to the sni'.e e'i'ei t. That answer was rfiarply commented upon. I wiote to him. a king w hether he had used tho-^e words. ]li» nply \\a, th.it h.s word-, w( n> '' ( Vrtauiiy and reality." In anothei letter he -aid .■ I had expect' d to il,x\ m the Church the inexpugnable citadel ot faith ; but i have loui.d in it no le s the home ot lo\e." So it remained, Religion warf the root of that peace which bel'-nged to more than the last forty years of his life.

It was not all who made the same friendly estimate of Cardinal Manning as was made by Julius Hare, his brother archdeacon in their Anglican diocese, at a clerical meeting held soon after Man-

nm£'s submission to Rome : " Alas ! we shall hear that Divine eloquence no more at our meetings." Not long after that submission I remember hearing three successive reports about him circulated among parties who had a quick ear for whatever illustrated what was called - the deterioration of converts." The first was that he bad been seen walking in the Corso at Home with a huntingwhip in his h-ind, and in a shooting- jacket opprobrium w ith lar»e horn buttons ; the second was that he had taken an Italian farm • and the third was that he had already manifested Mich a spirit of insubordination that tlu Pope had been obliged to send him to prison. In his Hter life, rumour, which had come in as v lion went out as a lamb, nnd limited itsclt to assertions that his - Liberal" op niotis in politics had only been as.-um«d as the Ivst way of playing a Catholic game in England. Tliis assumption was a mi«tiVe His political opinions were more '• Liberal " than mine had ever been ; for I had ever clung to those convictions which I had learned in my youth from Edmund Burke But, such as they were, ho had expressed them no less iri his Anglican than in his Catholic days— opposed in that re-'pt-ct to Newman and Pusey. He might, perhaps have echoed an expression attributed to lucordaire on his death-bed : " I die a penitent Catholic and an impenitent Liberal." All prejudices against him. as against Cardinal Newman, had died away many year* before' his death. Manning had, I believe, no resentments. Certainly he never confounded the men with the doctrine ; and, therefore, while uncompromising as regards the doetiine, he was never uncharitable to the individual. No one was more zealously a believer in what is sometimes called " invincible ignorance," but ought to be called " involuntary ignorance," of certain great truths ; but he might have also remarked that in our spiritual as in our material heritage poverty need be no more a sin than wealth is, provided that it is honestly come by. Such a comment upon the poet's " honest doubt " would seem to mean no more than that God alone knows the heart. I remember Manning's saying to me, •' We must always reme-nbt r that no man is lost whom Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love can save." He had sympathy with tho-e to whom he appeared very severe. Thus, writing in 18' JO of the Salvation Army, he i-aid .—"lf General Booth can gather under human influence and guidance those whom all other agencies for good have not yet reached, who shall forbid him > " He was for friendly cooperation where it was practicable : and once he remarked • '• It was the Quakers who had originated the Anti-slavery Society " The charge against him that he was a cold-hearted man ccrtaiuly was not sanctioned by his known love for children, and his exclamation on one occasion, >l A child's needless tear i& a blood-blot on thia earth."' The most remarkable characteristic of Cardinal Manning's intellect appeared to me to be its pellucid clearue.-s. — .» eleanie^Tby most men attained thiough effort, but his natuv My and inevitably. It, was apparently the result ot an intensely k, en logical faculty • but one not exercised in the common syllogistic form, but after a more transcendental fashion. It is this, uuconcious foim of logic which i nables a man to arrange as if by intuition the whole subnet-matter of his thought as it from a heghr. ;,nd thrs to torm a right judgment upon it. Another ch.uaeten ;io of hi-, intellect was us unusual c mbmation ot this scientific fatuity w ith imagination.