THE LATE CARDINAL WISEMAN.

Wellington Independent, Volume XX, Issue 2204, 11 May 1865, Page 5

THE LATE CARDINAL WISEMAN.

We regret to learn that the long illness of his eminence Cardinal Wiseman has at length reached a fatal termination. He died on the 15lh Feb., at the comparatively early age of (52. Nicholas Wiseman was the son of the late Mr Jas. Wiseman, merchant, of Waterford and of Seville, in which latter city the late Cardinal was born on the 2nd of August 1802. The family of Wiseman \s one of considerable antiquity, and they appear to have had lands in the county of Essex since the reign of Edwavd IV. Soon after the Reformation Sir John Wiseman, who had been one of the Audilors of the Exchequer under Henry VIII., and was knighted for his bravery at the Battle of Spurs, acquired by purchase Much Caiifield-park in that county. His grandson, William, who married into the noble family of Capel, afterwards Earls of Essex, was created a baronet by King Charles I. iv 1628, and a younger brother of the second baronet was Lord Bishop of Dromore. The title has continued in a direct line of snecession down to the present time, and is now represented by Sir Willfura Saltonstall Wis>eman, eighth baronet, who is a captain in tbe Royal Navy. From a younger branch of this family the late Cardinal traditionally claimed descent. His eminence's mother whose maiden name was Strange, and whose family, in spile of large confiscations of their property under Oliver Cromwell, is still seated at Aylward's Town Castle, in the county of Kil- , kenny, lived to see her son elevated to a Cardinal's hat, and died full of years in 1851. Though born upon Spanish soil, young Nicholas Wiseman, when he was a little more than five years old, was sent to England. He arrived at Portsmouth in January 1808, in the Melpomene frigate, Capt Parker, and was sent, while still very young, to a boarding school at Waterford, In March, 1810, he was transferred thence to the Roman Catholic College of St Cutbberf, at Us haw, near Durham, where he remained until 1818. In that year he obtained leave to quit Ushaw for Rome, where be arrived in December of that year, and became one of the first members of the English College then recently founded at Rome. In the next year he had the honor of preaching before the then Pope, Pius VII., and, hating pursued with diligeuce the usual course of philosophical and theological studies, he maintained a public disputation on theology, and was created a Doctor of Divinity in July 7, 1824, shortly before the completion of his 22 ud year. In the following spring he received holy orders, and in 1827 was nominated Professor of Oriental languages in the Roman University, being at that time Vice-Rector of 'the English College, to the rectorship of which he was promoted in the year 1829. He had already distinguished himself, not merely as a theologian, but also as a scholar, for in 1827 he composed and printed a learned work, entitled Home Syriacae, chiefly drawn from Oriental manuscripts in the Library of the Vatican. Dr Wiseman returned to England in 1835, aud in the winter of that year delivered a series of lectures, during the season of Advent, at the Sardiuian Chapel in Lincoln's-in-fields. In the Lent of the following year, at the request of the late Bishop Bramston, then Vicar-Apns-tolic of the London District, he delivered at St. Mary's Mooi fields, another course of lectures, iv which he vindicated, at considerable length, the principal doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, and with such success, that the Rotmn Catholics of the metropolis pie sen ted him with a gold medal, commemorative of their gratitude and of their high regard for his talents and acquirements. These " lectures" were speedily followed by a Treatise on the Hob/ Eucharist, which occasioned a theological controversy with Dr Turton, the late Bishop of Ely, aud by another work, in two volumes, entitled Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed Relit/ion. In the Lent of the year 1837, when he happened to be in Rome, he delivered four lectures on the " Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week," which were afterwards given to the world as a separate publication. In 1840 the late Pope Gregory XVI". increased the number of bis vicars apostolic in England from four to eight, and Dr Wiseman was appointed coadjutor to the late Bishop Walsh, then vicar apostolic of the midland district, being at the same time elevated to tbe presidency of St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. While there he took thedeepest interest in the theological movement at Oxford which is so associated with the names of Dr Newman and Dr Pusey, and which has furnished Rome with such an abundant store of recruits. In 1848, on the death of Bishop Griffiths, Dr Wiseman became pro-vicar-apostolic of the London district, and subsequently was nominated coadjutor to Dr Walsh, cum jure successionis, on the translation of that Pi elate to London. Bishop Walsk survived his translation but a short time ; and on his death, in 1849, Bishop Wiseman succeeded him as vicar apostolic. The next stage in Dr Wiseman's life is that which, as it has been more controverted than any other, so also is that by which his name will be longest remembsred; In August, 1850, Bishop Wiseman was summoned to Rome, to ihe " threshold of the apostles," by his Holiness Pope Pius IX., who, on the 29th of ihe following September, issued his celebrated " apostolic letter," re-establishing the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wale?, at the same time issuing a " brief" elevating Dr Wiseman to the archbishopric of Westminster. In a private consistory, held the following clay, the new " archbishop was raised by the Sovereign Pontiff to the dignity of a cardinal priest, the ancient church of St Pudenliana, at Rome, in conformity with the ecclesiastical custom, being selected by him as his title. His eminence was the seventh Englishman who has been elevated to the hat of a cardinal since the Reformation, his predecessors in this respect have been Cardinal Pole, Cardinal Allen, Caidiual Howard, Cardinal York, Cardinal Weld, and Cardinal Acton. The name of Cardinal Wiseman was well known in that portion of the literary world which interests itself in controversy as one of the most frequent and able contributors to the Dublin Jtevieiv, of which he was for some years the joint editor. Among other productions of his pen which appeared in that periodical we may name his " Strictures ou the High Church Movement in Oxford," which were reprinted by the Catholic Institute about twenty years ago for circulation in a cheap form, uuder the attractive title of " High Church Claims." His eminence's " Essays and Contributions to the Dublin Review" were collected and published, with a preface by the author, in three volumes Svo, in 1853. It is also understood that he contributed to the Penny Cyclopcedia Die article which treats ou the " Catholic Church." Among the best known of his eminence's other controversial and miscellaneous publications and his Fabiola, a tale of the Early Christians; his Reminiscences of the Four last Popes; A Letter on Catholic Unity, addressed to the late Earl of Shrewsbury ; a Letter to the Rev. J. 11. Newman, on the Controversy relatiug to the Oxford Tracts for the Times ; and a letter addressed to John Poynder, Esq , upon his work entitled Popery iv Alliance with Heathenism. To these must be added his Appeal to the Reason aud Good Feeling of the People of England, respecting the Papal aggression, in whicn he endeavoured to prove thai tbe matter at issue was merely a question relating to tbe internal and spiritual organisation of k the English Boman Catholics,

and in no sense a temporal measure, or one which involved any practical assault on the freedom of Protestants. To the London world and to the public at large Cardinal Wiseinrn's name was rendered most familiar by his frequent appearance upon the platform as a public lecturer upon a wide range of subjects connected with education, history, art, and science; and in this capacity his eminence always found an attentive and eager audience, even among those who were most conscientiously opposed to bis spiritual claims and pretensions, and who most thoroughly ignored him as "Archbishop of Westminster." The illness of which bis eminence has died has been of long .standing, and when he left England for Home in the spring of 1860, there weie many of his friends who feared that they would see his face no more. But he lived to return to England, and to recover some portion of bis former health. It is almost superfluous to add that his eminence's loss will be severely felt among the English Roman Catholics, both lay and clerical, as be was nearly the only member of their body who had earned for himself a wide and lasting reputation for ability and learning. —London Times,