people should be impressed by the vicissitudes
and surprises and dramatic completeness of Cardinal Newman's career.
It is not wonderful that he should be impressed by this himself. That
he who left us in despair and indignation in 1845 should have passed
through a course of things which has made him, Roman Catholic as he
is, a man of whom Englishmen are so proud in 1879, is even more
extraordinary than that the former Fellow of Oriel should now be
surrounded with the pomp and state of a Cardinal. There is only one
other career in our time which, with the greatest possible contrasts in
other points, suggests in its strangeness and antecedent improbabilities
something of a parallel. It is the train of events which has made
"Disraeli the Younger" the most powerful Minister whom England has seen
in recent years. But Lord Beaconsfield has aimed at what he has
attained to, and has fought his way to it through the chances and
struggles of a stirring public life. Cardinal Newman's life has been
from first to last the life of the student and recluse. He has lived in
the shade. He has sought nothing for himself. He has shrunk from the
thought of advancement. The steps to the high places of the world have
not offered themselves to him, and he has been content to be let alone.
Early in his course his rare gifts of mind, his force of character, his
power over hearts and sympathies, made him for a while a prominent
person. Then came a series of events which seemed to throw him out of
harmony with the great mass of his countrymen. He appeared to be, if not
forgotten, yet not thought of, except by a small number of friends--old
friends who had known him too well and too closely ever to forget, and
new friends gathered round him by the later circumstances of his life
and work. People spoke of him as a man who had made a great mistake and
failed; who had thrown up influence and usefulness here, and had not
found it there; too subtle, too imaginative for England, too
independent for Rome. He seemed to have so sunk out of interest and
account that off-hand critics, in the easy gaiety of their heart, might
take liberties with his name.

Then came the first surprise. The _Apologia_ was read with the keenest
interest by those who most differed from the writer's practical
conclusions; twenty years had elapsed since he had taken the unpopular
step which seemed to condemn him to obscurity; and now he emerged from
it, challenging not in vain the