orld
explained and comprised by the cold "changeless law" of foreordained
evolution and inevitable destiny. "Knowledge comes," said he, "but
wisdom lingers."

From the first, then, Tennyson lent the weight of his splendid name to
the cause of mercy, and I find his signature to the original great
petition for the restriction of vivisection between those of Leslie
Stephen and Robert Browning on the same sheet of paper--a sheet of paper
now one of the treasured possessions of the National Anti-Vivisection
Society.

All the world knows the allusions in his works to those who "carve the
living hound," and to curare, which he called "the hellish oorali." And
thus this greatest poet of the Victorian age gave the weight of his
commanding authority for all time to a fierce condemnation of vivisection
as the most awful and monstrous of the offsprings of modern Science.

Tennyson was religious in the widest and most inspiring sense.

"Almost the finest summing up of religion," he wrote, "is 'to do justice,
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.'"

"To love mercy!" That is the true sign of magnanimity in man. All holy
men, all brave men, all great and knightly men have loved mercy. "It is
an attribute to God Himself."

Time passes, and succeeding races of mankind, like the leaves of autumn,
are blown away and perish, but countless men of heroic mould, reaching
back into the dim mists of legend and down through innumerable years
while the great world spins "for ever down the ringing grooves of
change," have one and all been gloriously crowned with the same shining
diadem of mercy.

CHAPTER X: CARDINAL NEWMAN

[Picture: Cardinal Newman. From the portrait by Jane Fortescue, Lady
Coleridge]

It is difficult perhaps for students of the younger generation to realise
the immense influence exercised among his contemporaries by Cardinal
Newman, nor will a study of his writings adequately explain it to them.

He has hardly survived as a standard author, though he wrote a pure and
lucid prose. Those who leave the bulk of their literary work behind them
in the form of sermons are inviting the world to neglect it.

Moreover, though he was a past master of controversy, the arena in which
he fought with such doughty prowess amid the excited plaudits and
dehortations of vast assemblies is now left solitary in echoing
emptiness, and the crowds of to-day have passed away to abet the