articles called _The Tamworth
Reading-Room_, he will see what a journalist was lost, or only partly
developed, in this cardinal. He had the conviction, which is far more
necessary to a journalist than is generally thought; and yet his
convictions were not of that extremely systematic and far-reaching kind
which no doubt often stands in the journalist's way. He had the faculty
of mixing bad and good argument, which is far more effective with mixed
audiences than unbated logic. And, little as he is thought of as
sympathising with the common people, he was entirely free from that
contempt of them which always prevents a man from gaining their ear
unless he is a consummately clever scoundrel.

It may however be retorted that if Newman was a born journalist, sermons
and theology must be a much better school of style in journalism than
articles and politics. And it is quite true that his writing at its best
is of extraordinary charm, while that charm is not, as in the case of
some of his contemporaries and successors, derived from dubiously
legitimate ornament and flourish, but observes the purest classical
limitations of proportion and form. It has perhaps sometimes been a
little over-valued, either by those who in this way or that--out of love
for what he joined or hate to what he left--were in uncritical sympathy
with Newman, or by others it may be from pure ignorance of the fact that
much of this charm is the common property of the more scholarly writers
of the time, and is only eminently, not specially, present in him. But
of the fact of it there is no doubt. In such a sermon for instance as
that on "The Individuality of the Soul," a thought or series of
thoughts, in itself poetically grandiose enough for Taylor or even for
Donne, is presented in the simplest but in the most marvellously
impressive language. The sentences are neither volleying in their
shortness, nor do they roll thundrously; the cadences though perfect are
not engineered with elaborate musical art; there are in proportion very
few adjectives; the writer exercises the most extreme continence in
metaphor, simile, illustration, all the tricks and frounces of literary
art. Yet Taylor, though he might have attained more sweetness or more
grandeur, could hardly have been more beautiful; and though Donne might
have been so, it would have been at the expense of clearness. Newman is
so clear that he has often been accused of being, and sometimes is, a
little ha