o Rome early in Lent and remain till
after Easter. Promising subjects, who had doubts as to their
probabilities of salvation in the Anglican communion, used to be
invited to dinner to meet him, and they fell in swift succession
before his skilful presentation of the peace and bliss to be found
within the Roman fold.

In his public appearances, it was neither the solid substance of his
discourses nor the literary quality of their style that struck one,
but their judicious adaptation to the audience, and the grace with
which they were delivered. For this reason--originality being rarer
and therefore more precious in the pulpit, where well-worn themes have
to be handled, than on a platform, where the topic is one of the
moment--his addresses at public meetings were better than his sermons,
and won for him the reputation of a speaker whom it was well worth
while to secure at any social or philanthropic gathering. At the
Vatican OEcumenical Council of 1870 it was less by his speeches than
by his work in private among the assembled prelates that he served the
Infallibilist cause. Himself devoted, and, no doubt, honestly devoted,
to Ultramontane principles, he did not hesitate to do violence to
history and join in destroying what freedom the Church at large had
retained, in order to exalt the Chair of Peter to a position unheard
of even at Trent, not to say in the Middle Ages. His activity, his
assiduity, and his tireless powers of persuasion contributed largely
to the satisfaction at that Council of the wishes of Pius IX., who
presently rewarded him with the Cardinalate. But the opponents of the
new dogma, who were as superior in learning to the Infallibilists as
they proved inferior in numbers, carried back with them to Germany and
North America an undying distrust of the astute Englishman who had
shown more than a convert's proverbial eagerness for rushing to
extremes and forcing others to follow. I remember to have met some of
the anti-Infallibilist prelates returning to America in the autumn of
1870; and in our many talks on shipboard they spoke of the Archbishop
in terms no more measured than Nestorius may have used of St. Cyril
after the Council of Ephesus.

But Manning's powers shone forth most fully in the course he gave to
his policy as Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman
hierarchy in Britain. He had two difficulties to confront. One was the
suspicion of the old English Roman Catholic families, who dist