ns of so altered
a position; which is so generous to what he feels to be strong and good
in what he has nevertheless abandoned, so fearless about letting his
whole case come out, so careless about putting himself in the right in
detail; which is so calm, and kindly, and measured, with such a quiet
effortless freedom from the stings of old conflicts, which bears so few
traces of that bitterness and antipathy which generally--and we need
hardly wonder at it--follows the decisive breaking with that on which a
man's heart was stayed, and for which he would once have died.

There is another thing to be said, and we venture to say it out
plainly, because Dr. Newman himself has shown that he knows quite well
what he has been doing. While he has written what will command the
sympathy and the reverence of every one, however irreconcilably opposed
to him, to whom a great and noble aim and the trials of a desperate and
self-sacrificing struggle to compass it are objects of admiration and
honour, it is undeniable that ill-nature or vindictiveness or stupidity
will find ample materials of his own providing to turn against him.
Those who know Dr. Newman's powers and are acquainted with his career,
and know to what it led him, and yet persist in the charge of
insincerity and dishonesty against one who probably has made the
greatest sacrifice of our generation to his convictions of truth, will
be able to pick up from his own narrative much that they would not
otherwise have known, to confirm and point the old familiar views
cherished by dislike or narrowness. This is inevitable when a man takes
the resolution of laying himself open so unreservedly, and with so
little care as to what his readers think of what he tells them, so that
they will be persuaded that he was ever, even from his boyhood, deeply
conscious of the part which he was performing in the sight of his
Maker. Those who smile at the belief of a deep and religious mind in
the mysterious interventions and indications of Providence in the
guidance of human life, will open their eyes at the feeling which leads
him to tell the story of his earliest recollections of Roman Catholic
peculiarities, and of the cross imprinted on his exercise-book. Those
who think that everything about religion and their own view of religion
is such plain sailing, so palpable and manifest, that all who are not
fools or knaves must be of their own opinion, will find plenty to
wonder at in the confessio