barely mentionable
thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art
and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral. Newman
had a great contempt for immorality, and that evening, for a good half
hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt
rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock's letter.
His good nature checked his resenting the young minister's lofty
admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking
them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he
found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of the
sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. It
represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl,
kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face. It was
a wonderfully delicate piece of carving, and in a moment, through one
of the rents of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk's
waist. In Newman's intention what did the figure symbolize? Did it mean
that he was going to try to be as "high-toned" as the monk looked at
first, but that he feared he should succeed no better than the friar, on
a closer inspection, proved to have done? It is not supposable that he
intended a satire upon Babcock's own asceticism, for this would have
been a truly cynical stroke. He made his late companion, at any rate, a
very valuable little present.

Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna, and then
returned westward, through Southern Germany. The autumn found him at
Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks. The place was charming, and
he was in no hurry to depart; besides, he was looking about him and
deciding what to do for the winter. His summer had been very full, and
he sat under the great trees beside the miniature river that trickles
past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over. He had seen and
done a great deal, enjoyed and observed a great deal; he felt older,
and yet he felt younger too. He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desire
to form conclusions, and he remembered also that he had profited very
little by his friend's exhortation to cultivate the same respectable
habit. Could he not scrape together a few conclusions? Baden-Baden
was the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in the
evening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution. This was
one of his concl