CARDINAL NEWMAN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 5, 31 October 1890, Page 11

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

One of Cardinal Newman's "old boys" writes some interesting reminiscences in the Pall Mall Gazette. He says : " The Cardinal was a great novel reader, and dehgnte 1 in the works of Miss Au9ten, jjThackeray, the Bronte i, and, generally speaking, the older set of ij o nglißh novelists, The last two years his sight greatly failed him. hen I was last at Edgbaston he remarked to me with a sign that w, for the first time in his life, he found time hanging heavy on 8 hands. I suggestei tbat perhaps the electric light might enable m to see more clearly. He answered slowly : ' I have always used Candles, and do not thiuk I could take t> anything else.' In politics ne was an old-fashioned Whig and was rarely heard to express any interest iv contemporary affairs. It always gave him great pleasure when one of his boys went to Oxford. His affjctioo. for the university wi'h which so much of bis life had been closely associated, was touching. Tbe word Oxford seemed to recall pleasant and good memories, and often he alluied to ihe reception given him there in 1878, with the remark : 'Thsy had not forgotten me, any more than I had forgotten them.' He some'imes spoke of the f o c r years he had spent in Rome Bhortly af ier his conversion as having be^n in every sense a blessed and happy time, and yet the Cardinal never showed any undue eagerness to secure converts. To him emotional religion seemed but a sn*re, and his advice to would-be Catholics was ' Wait.' It woul i be impossible to enumerate those who directly or indirectly followed him when he came over, although Father Faber and Hope Scott came necessarily unier his influence. Among the Oratorian Fathers there were only four who were bora in the Church to which they now owe their allegiance, surely this fact speaks for itself. Life at the Oratory flowed caimly and evenly on. Even to the last a very early riser, His Eminence spent part of every

reading and commenting on the work of his favourite saint, A than asius. Old friends, both Catholic and Protestant, were always welcome, aad sometime were even asked to spend a few days with him at Rednal. Soon after Dr. Pusey'a death Canoa Liddon came down to Edg baston for three days, and talked over old times and the present grief in a fashion which seemingly cheered and ple»sed the Carding greatly, and this spring frequent were the letters and messages b 'tween the Oratory and the sick Canon. Always a firm friend of the Howard family (the Duke of Norfolk was one of his private pupils), the la9t time Cardinal Newman was see i in London was on the occasion of the death of tha Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. None who wag present will ever forget tha impre^ive scene presented by the interior of Brompton Oratory that day, the crowd of mourners belonging to every rank and condition of men and women, for the Duchess was one of those who did much gojd by stealth, and the two Cardinals Newman and Manning, officiating at the altar were each in turn casting hjly water upon the coffin. Through his connection with the pres3nt Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Newman was more or leas thrown into relations with the la'e Lord Granville. The two men, though singularly unalike, had a great sympathy and esteem for ona another, aod the Cardinal promised to stay at the British Embassy should he ever spend a few days in Paris. I once overheard a curious short conversation between the Cardinal and one of his friends apropos of modern France. Ihe latter remarked that some kind of reviva iat preaching friars were sorely needed both in the towas and villages, where the ordinary services of the Catholic Church, however admirably conducted, seemed to lack vivifying power. He made a slight but peremptory gesture of dissent and said slowly : ' They want saints 1 ' He had a great cult for the Blessed Virgin, and always impressed upon those around Lim the reverence and homage he felt to be due te the Mother of the Saviour, aud the ' Memorare ' was always quoted by him as being ' a very good prayer.' Full of infinite tenderness and pity for tno9e in trouble or distress, his letter of condolence to the Empress Eugenic, written within a week of the Princa Imperial's death in Zululand, was one of the few which the Empress copied out and sent to some of her son's old and faithful Frenck adherents. The Cardinal had latterly quite given up preaching ; but iv private conversation he was as keea and incisive in speech as ever. A personal friend of Leo XIII., a week rarely passed without some message or missive arriving at Edgebaston from the Vatican, and it is said that the attention always paid to the Duke of Norfolk by the Holy Father is entirely owing to a certain letter of introduction once written by Cardinal Newman recommending his ' old boy ' to the Sovereign Pontiff's particular care.