ing its wings and
opening its beak to imitate the eagle of catholic lecterns. And he has a
singularly nettling manner with some people which must add, I should
think, to this unpopularity. He seems sweepingly satisfied with himself
and his opinions, which are mostly of a challenging nature. He does not
discuss but attempts to browbeat. His voice is an argument, and the
expression on his face and the fire in his eyes suggest the street
corner. He would have greatly distressed a man like Matthew Arnold, for
the only method against such didactics is to send for the boxing gloves.

All the same he is a man of no little force, perhaps a scattered and
dispersed force, as I am inclined to think; and he is a fighter whose
blows, if not a teacher whose opinions, are more worthy of attention
than his sacerdotal pretensions might lead one to suppose.

In appearance he may be compared with Dr. Clifford, but Dr. Clifford
reduced to youthfulness and multiplied by an infinite cocksureness; a
small, eager, sandy-haired, clean-shaven, boyish-looking man, with
light-coloured eyes behind shining spectacles, the head craning forward,
the body elastic and restless with inexhaustible energy, the whole of
him--body, mind, and spirit--tremulous with a jerkiness of being which
seems to have no effect whatever on his powers of endurance.

One misses in him all feeling, all tone, of mellowness. His mind, at
present, shows no lightest, trace of the hallowing marks of time; it
suggests rather the very architecture he takes so savage a pleasure in
denouncing--a kind of mock Gothic mind, an Early Doulton personality.
He has a thin voice, rather husky, and a recent accent.

In his most vigorous moments, when he is bubbling over with epigrams and
paradoxes, ridiculing the dull people who do not agree with him, and
laughing to scorn those who think they can maintain the Christian spirit
outside the mysterious traditions of the Catholic Church, or when he is
describing a recent church as a Blancmange Cathedral, and paraphrasing
an account, given I think by Mr. James Douglas, of the building of a
certain tabernacle in London--first it started out to be a Jam Factory,
then a happy idea occurred to the builder that he should turn it into a
Waterworks, then the foreman suggested that it would make an ideal
swimming-bath, but finally the architect came on the scene and said,
"Here, half a minute; there's an alteration wanted here; we're going to
make it in