rs after his secession, is the record of a drama which
ended in the interview with Father Dominic the Passionist. It is 'The
History of my Religious Opinions'; and after 1845 his religious opinions
had, as he says himself, no further history. The incomparable style
which will give him a permanent place among the masters of English prose
was the product of his life at Oxford, where he lived in a society of
highly cultivated men, whose writings show many of the same excellences
as his own. Newman's English is only the Oriel manner at its best. Such
an instrument could hardly have been forged at the Birmingham Oratory,
where his associates, who had followed him from Littlemore, were of such
an inferior type that Mark Pattison, who knew them, was surprised that
he could be satisfied with their company. His best sermons and his best
poetry belong to his Anglican period. 'The Dream of Gerontius,' with all
its tender grace, is far less virile than 'Lead, kindly Light,' and
other short poems of his youth. Moreover, his record as a Roman
ecclesiastic is one of almost unrelieved failure. If he had died
eighteen years after his secession, when he already looked upon himself
as an old man whose course was nearly run, he would have been regarded
as one who had sacrificed a great career in the Church of England for
neglect and obscurity. From the first he was distrusted by the 'Old
Catholics' (the old Roman Catholic families in England), and suspected
at the Vatican, where Talbot assiduously represented him as 'the most
dangerous man in England.' When Manning, Archdeacon of Chichester,
followed his example and joined the Roman Church, Newman was confronted
with a still more subtle and relentless opponent, whose hostility was
never relaxed till the accession of a Liberal Pope made it no longer
possible to resist the bestowal of tardy honours upon a feeble
octogenarian. The recognition came in time to soothe his decline, but
too late to enable him to leave his mark upon the administration of the
Roman Church.

The main events in a very uneventful career are narrated at length in
Mr. Ward's volumes. After his 'conversion' Newman first resided in a
small community at Maryvale (Oscott) but soon left it on a journey to
Rome, where he spent some time at the Collegio di Propaganda, and had a
foretaste of the distrust with which Pius IX and his advisers always
regarded him. His plan at this time was to found a theological seminary
at Maryvale