Chapter 12. Progress of the University (1855-1857)

{344} NEWMAN settled down to the routine work of the University. He had lodged at first in Rutland Square, when he gave the lectures of 1852, but soon moved—so he tells us in his Notes—and lived 'as a boarder in Dr. Quinn's school in Harcourt Street.' He kept his rooms from that date until he removed in the same year into Mrs. Segrave's house in the same street, which he rented. This was his house when he came to reside in Dublin, and here he often invited his friends to breakfast or dine with him.

Keeping house was a new experience to him, and not entirely congenial. 'I have no plate here,' he writes to Henry Wilberforce in November 1854, 'but a few electro plated spoons and forks—and feel the full value of "Cantabit vacuus &c." It is odd, I should begin to keep house at 53. For the first time I heard the cook (Martin Jones) call me "master." It shocked me so much that I forbade the word and am to be called "the Rector," "the Father," anything or all things but it.'

A month later, after term had begun, we find him again writing to Henry Wilberforce, whose eldest son Arthur (afterwards Father Bertrand Wilberforce) wished to reside in Newman's house in Dublin and attend the University lectures. The letter is hopeful in tone, but the figures it gives do not speak of any great success in obtaining undergraduates.

'We are doing well here,' he writes. 'Our Inaugural Lectures are telling. We began with 17 youths in lecture—we have risen in the course of the term to 27. We commence next term with 33 certain. I have 8 in my house. It is impossible for me now to take Arthur for some time, and that is why I wrote to you about him before I was so full. {345} He may well wait at Ushaw. I am to have in my house 2 English, 2 Irish, and 2 French & 2 Scotch.'

Newman threw himself with keen interest into his work. It is clear that the idea of the University as an intellectual and spiritual centre was prominent in his mind, and that he thought of its influence on society at large as well as on its alumni. He has left an interesting memorandum enumerating the principal objects which he endeavoured to accomplish during the term of his office. These were:

(1) The foundation of a University Church as a centre of influence on the cultivated classes in Dublin, as well as on the actual students of the University; and the foundation of an Oratory as its complement.

(2) A scheme for setting up a periodical organ of the University in the Catholic University Gazette.

(3) The establishment of medical schools, to which he hoped to add a school of science on a larger scale, an astronomical observatory and chemical laboratory.

(4) The special encouragement of Celtic literature.

Furthermore, he hoped to obtain a charter from the State which should make the University a corporation, and enable it to hold property; while the students could obtain their theological degrees from Rome, and degrees in science and arts from the Queen's University.

In some of these objects he succeeded, though not in all.

(1) The University Church was the development of a less ambitious project. He at first contemplated only a small chapel attached to his house in Harcourt Street as a suitable locale for University sermons. He felt that the pulpit afforded him a very special opportunity for influence, both moral and intellectual, on the educated classes. He coveted for this reason a position analogous to the Mastership of the Temple Church in London. On this subject Father Neville has left the following note:

'The Mastership of the Temple Church in London had always been regarded by Dr. Newman as his beau ideal of a position for religious influence. Oxford, he said, with all its advantages, had the drawback of being a place of but temporary residence, its members coming and going within a very limited time. Upon those who remained there long, {346} this gradual flowing away of those who had surrounded them, could not but have a most isolating effect, making them, as it were, more and more out of place; a disadvantage which, he said, must soon have applied to himself, had he remained there. At the Temple, however, was to be found an audience which for trained powers of mind was, perhaps, unique; an audience, moreover, that was unshifting, and thus able to follow the "Master's" current of thought year after year. Now Dublin also was famous for the number and the standing of its Lawyers; the Medical Faculty, too, was in high repute; he felt that he could do a work among these that he had not had the opportunity of attempting elsewhere; and he had the hope that his intended little Chapel, with the Rectorship of the University, would afford him a sphere of influence, the best that in his circumstances he could have. On one occasion reminding those who stood by him discussing this plan, how much he had done at Oxford with the aid of a few others, he said: "Was it not a good work I began in Adam de Brome's Chapel at Oxford? Why then should not just such another serve me here in Dublin, and I not do better work with the grace of being a Catholic?"

When he found himself unable to secure the premises he had wanted for his chapel, his thoughts passed to the more ambitious plan of a University Church and Oratory. He thought of these as a centre of influence for other preachers, as well as himself. He had in mind as a precedent the University Sermons preached by select preachers at Oxford. He writes of this plan as follows:

'I thought—(1) Nothing was a more simple and complete advertisement of the University than a large Church open for worship; the cheapest advertisement, since, if self-supporting, it cost the University nothing, yet was perpetual and in the face of day. (2) It symbolized the great principle of the University, the indissoluble union of philosophy with religion. (3) It provided for University formal acts, for Degree-giving, for solemn lectures and addresses, such as those usual at the opening and closing of the Academical year, for the weekly display of the University authorities, &c., a large hall at once, and one which was ennobled by the religious symbols which were its furniture. (4) It interested the clergy in the University, the preachers being taken from all parts of the country. {347}

'Further than this, I connected it in my anticipations with the idea I had, and which Hope-Scott suggested in his letter at the end of December, 1853, of founding an Oratory at Dublin. My notion was that an Oratory would be the religious complement of an Intellectual School; that it would not take part in the work proper to a University, but that it would furnish preachers and confessors for the University body, establish confraternities, and in all the many ways which the Church employs, counteract the dangers incident to a high school of learning and science, and a large collection of young men entering into life. When I went to Rome on Oratory business at Christmas, 1855-56, I brought the matter before Cardinal Barnabo, with the sanction and promise of aid of Dr. Cullen. He was to obtain for me a Brief. Whether he gave me a letter or promised to write to Rome about it, I do not know. Nothing came of my application.

'As early as 10th February, 1854, I find I got Dr. Moriarty to give me a list of preachers. In the second number of the University Gazette, 8th June, I say: "It is also proposed to open a University Church, for the solemn exercises of the Academical body, as time goes on, and for sermons on Sundays and other great Festivals at once. A list of University preachers is in preparation, and will appear with as little delay as possible."

It was some time before he was enabled to build the University Church. Dr. Cullen did not take up the idea warmly, and did not see his way to helping the scheme financially. At first it was thought that some existing church would serve the purpose, and St. Audeon's in the High Street was proposed as a suitable building. But this plan broke down, and in the end the present beautiful church at Stephen's Green was built by Newman himself, who utilised for the purpose a portion of the excess of the money subscribed for the expenses of the Achilli trial over what was actually required to meet them.

'In November, 1854,' he writes, 'I got acquainted with Mr. Pollen, Professor (honorary) of the Fine Arts, and I employed him as my architect, or rather decorator, for my idea was to build a large barn, and decorate it in the style of a Basilica, with Irish marbles and copies of standard pictures. I set about the building at once, and it was solemnly opened on May 1st, 1856.' {348}

This church was a source of great satisfaction to Newman. His critical interest in it, as well as his appreciation of its beauty, are visible in a letter to Mr. Pollen dated November 9, 1856:

'The apse is magnificent,' he writes, 'that is the word—it is not yet quite splendid. The green marble behind the candles is faulty in two ways. (1) It is too dark, and, if expensive, is thrown away—and (2) the line of its finish, too abrupt. The pattern of my glass is very good, but it wants (what the ground will have) colour, to connect and harmonize the testudo with the alabaster. The Cartoons, to my eye, require a ground above them, perhaps round them; but I expect you will differ. The chandeliers promise very well. Altogether it is most imposing—I should like to hear what others say ...

'P.S. I have come from High Mass. The more I looked at the apse, the more beautiful it seemed to me—and, to my taste, the church is the most beautiful one in the three Kingdoms. The day is a dark one, and I wanted it light.'

Newman devoted the greatest care to the services, the music, the ceremonies, the vestments; and he looked forward, as Father Neville testifies, to his church being perfect in these respects. The church itself, in its style and decorations, was the outcome of his own suggestions, the ancient churches of Rome serving him largely as a model. It was in this church that he preached a considerable number of the discourses published afterwards under the title of 'Occasional Sermons.'

(2) As to the University Gazette, Newman hoped that it 'would contain a record of the University proceedings, would be a medium of intelligence between its governing body and members, would give a phantasia of life to it in the eyes of strangers, and would indoctrinate the Irish public in the idea of a University.' 'I commenced it,' he writes, 'contemporaneously with my own installation in June, 1854, and inserted in it the papers on Universities which I had written with a view to it in the Spring of the year.' Newman edited the Gazette himself for a year, and printed in its pages the very important Essays and Historical Studies afterwards republished under the title of the 'Idea of a University,' [Note 1] and now {349} contained in the third volume of his 'Historical Sketches.' It was afterwards edited by Mr. Ornsby.

'It fully answered my expectations,' writes Newman of the Gazette, 'while it was in my hands; afterwards it fell off and came to an end.'

(3) The Medical School House in Cecilia Street was a complete success, and survives to this day. It was purchased by Newman in the summer of 1856, at the instance of Dr. Ellis, and it proved an immense boon in training Catholic practitioners, and securing work for them.

'This House served another purpose besides that which was its direct service to us,' Newman writes. 'It put our Medical Faculty in a bodily, visible shape before the Dublin public, and thus did for the University in regard to that important department what the Church was to do as regards theological and religious teaching. And it came into operation at once, for the Theatre, Dissecting Rooms, etc., etc., were all in order and recent use, whereas the Church was not built and opened till the Spring of 1856.'

Mr. W. K. Sullivan made the additional suggestion of a Medical Lodging House for the protection of the young medical students from the moral dangers of a large city.

The Medical Schools from the first promised success, and Newman very soon conceived the idea of developing them, so as to form a complete school of science. In this bold idea he had the concurrence of Mr. Sullivan. He writes as follows on the subject:

'Mr. Sullivan, whose advice I acted under, was all through my time of great assistance to me. His views were large and bold, and I cordially embraced them. The old routine was to depend on external support, prestige, authority, etc., and of course such helps are not to be despised; but they are not all in all, nor are they imperative. It was a great point to gain the Medical House, but it was not everything. Dr. Ellis did well in getting it for us, but he had little idea of making ventures. I have the following note in my Journal, under the date of 25th January, 1855: "I have had a talk with Mr. Sullivan about the Medical Professorships. He took quite a different line from Mr. O'Reilly (Surgeon), and Mr. Ellis, etc., who had said, 'Who will you get to come until you get a whole school? for your certificate {350} will not be taken.' But he took the line, 'Raise up something good, and people will come; the supply will create the demand.' And he said that there were three provinces unknown in the United Kingdom, except that something has been lately doing in Edinburgh, viz., Physiology, Pathology, Pharmacy. He was for employing German Professors (Catholics); he said they were good Catholics." He and Dr. Lyons were the movement party among the Medical Professors afterwards, and Drs. Ellis, Haydn, and Swiny the conservative.

'The establishment of a good School of Science was one of the foremost objects which I kept in view. I consulted the Observer (Manuel Johnson) at Oxford about an Astronomical Observatory; and he wished me rather to establish a Meteorological (vide Journal, p. 41). This I tried to do, with Mr. Hennessy for Professor; but I never was able even to begin it.

'A Chemical Laboratory I fitted up in the Medical House at a considerable expense in 1856.'

The Atlantis magazine—of which more shall be said later on—was designed as an aid to the scientific department of the University. 'It was started,' Newman writes, 'with the object of encouraging our scientific labours, and forming the faculty, and making its members work together, and advertising the University. The literary portion of it was necessary as padding, because science does not deal in words, and the results of a year's experiments may be contained in one or two pages.'

(4) The subject of Celtic literature was suggested by Dr. Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, as one specially suitable to a University in Dublin, and Mr. Eugene O'Curry (a man of whom Newman speaks as possessing a unique knowledge of Celtic MSS.) was at hand to help the scheme forward.

Newman regarded the work done in the event by Mr. O'Curry as one of the real achievements of the University.

'Mr. O'Curry,' he writes, 'lectured for us and published one thick volume on the sources of Irish history; I think at the University's expense. I believe Mr. Sullivan, since his lamentable and unexpected death, is engaged in publishing a second. These are real works, and acquisitions which {351} would, to all appearance, have been lost to the world but for the University. Also, in the course of a year or two, I went to the expense of having a font of Irish type cast for the use of the University; there being up to that time only the Trinity College type, and I think one other.'

The question of State recognition for the University was of course a very grave one.

'The go-ahead Irish party,' writes Newman, 'were for giving Degrees at all risks, and in spite of consequences. I liked the idea of the latter course myself, but did not think we were up to it. If Bishops and University authorities as one man, adopted this policy without wavering, and with a stern determination to carry it out, I should have been for it, but this not only was not likely, but I knew they would not; the feeling of our English friends was so strong against it. And, moreover, I have no clear view what was the good of conferring Degrees till we have a name, though of course the two years which would be gained in preparation time for being called to the bar was no slight advantage. But on the whole Irish schools, etc., would take out testamurs and honours, whether they had legal value or not. What I most inclined to was the Louvain plan, which was the more to the purpose because our University was set up in our Brief after the pattern of Louvain. There Theological Degrees are given by power from Rome; and Degrees in other Faculties by passing examination before the State Board of Examiners ... Accordingly I wished the State to charter us so far as to make us a corporation and to enable us to hold property; and then we should have power from Rome for Theology and for Arts for Church purposes, and then our youths might go to the Queen's University for their Degrees in Arts, Medicine, and Law. As early as March, 1854, this idea was suggested to me. In my Journal, under date of the 16th, I note down: "Yesterday at All-hallows. It was suggested, as it had struck me already, that the Belgian way was a precedent for our getting Degrees by passing examinations before the Queen's University. Only, since in Belgium there is a Concordat, or the like, things must be very different from here, where Catholicism is ignored. Would the judges be fair to Catholics?" ... I think it was in 1856 that I wrote a long letter to Monsell advocating the plan, and I spoke of it to many others, but it met with acceptance in no quarter.' {352}

Newman always spoke of the absence of a charter and of State recognition as one among the causes of the failure of the University [Note 2].

The Rector's work for the University did not prevent him from writing even on subjects unconnected with its conduct. Two characteristic literary efforts belong to the period of his connection with the University. 'Callista,' begun in 1849, and laid aside, was finished in 1856. His letters tell us no more than the bare fact; and the book is so well known that I shall say no more of it here. Less well known are the letters of 1854 on the Crimean War written to the Catholic Standard and signed 'Catholicus.' 'Who's to blame' for the disasters which marked the first months of the war?—this is the question he discusses [Note 3].

The most memorable passages from these letters are those in which Newman analyses the genius of the English Constitution and the characteristic temper of John Bull. The average Britisher was at the moment abusing soldiers, sailors, statesmen—everyone but himself—as responsible for the disasters. Yet Newman held that the British public was really more to blame than anyone else. John Bull, the free English citizen whose house was his castle, had decreed the war. That very British Constitution which was the offspring of the temper of John Bull and the protector of his liberties, hampered at every turn the executive, which had to wage the war for which John Bull himself had clamoured.

'England, surely,' he writes, 'is the paradise of little men, and the purgatory of great ones. May I never be a Minister of State or Field-Marshal! I'd be an individual, self-respecting Briton, in my own private castle, with the Times to see the world by, and pen and paper to scribble off withal to some public print, and set the world right. Public men {353} are only my employés; I use them as I think fit, and turn them off without warning. Aberdeen, Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, Newcastle, what are they muttering about services and ingratitude? were they not paid? hadn't they their regular quarter-day? Raglan, Burgoyne, Dundas,—I can't recollect all the fellows' names,—can they merit aught? can they be profitable to me their lord and master? And so, having no tenderness or respect for their persons, their antecedents or their age,—not caring that in fact they are serving me with all their strength, not asking whether, if they manage ill, it be not, perchance, because they are in the fetters of Constitutional red tape, which have weighed on their hearts and deadened their energies, till the hazard of failure and the fear of censure have quenched the spirit of daring, I think it becoming and generous,—during, not after, their work, not when it is ended, but in the very agony of conflict,—to institute a formal process of inquiry into their demerits, not secret, not indulgent to their sense of honour, but in the hearing of all Europe and amid the scorn of the world,—hitting down, knocking over, my workhouse apprentices, in order that they may get up again, and do my matters for me better.'

In point of fact, the very idea of the British Constitution is that everything is to be done by the nation. Every class is to have a share in determining what is done. This secures liberty, but it is fatal to first-rate efficiency. And while in time of peace it prevents tyranny on the part of the executive, it hampers it hopelessly in time of war.

'Put a sword into the Ruler's hands, it is at his option to use or not use it against you; reclaim it, and who is to use it for you? Thus, if States are free, they are feeble; if they are vigorous, they are high-handed. I am not speaking of a nation or a people, but of a State as such; and I say, the more a State secures to itself of rule and centralization, the more it can do for its subjects externally; and the more it grants to them of liberty and self-government, the less it can do against them internally: and thus a despotic government is the best for war, and a popular government the best for peace.'

The main thesis he maintains is that a constitutional government cannot efficiently control a war, and should therefore be very slow to enter into one. {354}

'John Bull, like other free, self-governing nations, would undertake a little war just now, as if it were his forte,—as great lawyers have cared for nothing but a reputation for dancing gracefully, and literary men have bought a complex coat-of-arms at the Heralds' College. Why will we not be content to be human? why not content with the well-grounded consciousness that no polity in the world is so wonderful, so good to its subjects, so favourable to individual energy, so pleasant to live under, as our own? I do not say, why will we go to war? but why will we not think twice first? why do we not ascertain our actual position, our strength, our weakness, before we do so?

'And now however circuitously I have answered my question, "Who's to blame for the untoward events in the Crimea?" They are to blame, the ignorant, intemperate public, who clamour for an unwise war, and then, when it turns out otherwise than they expected, instead of acknowledging their fault, proceed to beat their zealous servants in the midst of the fight for not doing impossibilities.'

I could wish that materials were available for an adequate account of Newman's personal influence during these years in Dublin. He held evening receptions for the young men of the town, at which he gave conferences. And he found opportunity for social intercourse with others. The influence he thus exercised was, so Father Neville used to say, memorable; though it was confined to a comparatively small group. Something of the old fascination—social, spiritual, and intellectual combined—which had enthralled the élite of Oxford in the later thirties seems to have made itself felt once again in Dublin, among members of a race especially appreciative of intellectual distinction and charm.

'Newman often entertained members of the Irish clergy and laity to dinner at Harcourt Street,' wrote the late Mr. John Pollen in a letter to myself. 'Bishop Moriarty was, however, the only Bishop who came. The Rector talked especially freely and brilliantly with all these Irish friends, and keenly appreciated the wit and genius of some of them.' He considered the Irish clergy (with whom he was very popular) on the whole to be large-minded, although there were some who shared Dr. Cullen's less liberal attitude of mind. With myself and other Oxford friends he was fond of returning to Oxford memories and the halo of Oxford came {355} back to him very strongly at this time. He received from time to time distinguished visitors. Acton and Döllinger were greatly interested in Newman's work in Ireland, and I entertained both of them at my rooms.'

But there ever seems to have hung over the Rector the shadow of actual and prospective misunderstanding with the leaders of the Episcopate.

'Newman had a constant sense,' continues Mr. Pollen, 'that he was in a hornets' nest. Some of the Bishops did not give him his proper place—having a conception of their position which was incompatible with treating him as an equal. Newman on his side preserved towards them an attitude of painstaking politeness. He was also tried by the line taken by these prelates in respect of intellectual problems. "They regard any intellectual man as being on the road to perdition," he said.'

In point of fact, for various reasons, there was a cloud over his work from first to last.

No work can be carried on at all without some hope; and we find letters from Newman in the course of the three years of his effective Rectorship—for he ceased to reside at the end of 1857—in which he makes the best of things. But on the whole it is clear that he never seriously changed the view which he formed in February 1854, that, as a practical work, the University was doomed to failure. He hoped indeed against hope. He was slow to abandon without a fair trial the idea that Ireland with its great Catholic population might supply a University which should be to the Catholics of the Kingdom what Louvain was to the Belgian Catholics—the home of a liberal education enabling them to be a real power in the country in proportion to their numerical strength. But towards the realisation of this hope no event seemed to point. What good purpose then could be served by his continued service in a hopeless enterprise? But, moreover, incompatibility between the views of Dr. Cullen and of Newman made the prolongation of the experiment impossible. The year 1855 was nearly reached when the University was started; and in 1856 Newman definitely announced to Dr. Cullen that his resignation was to take place in the following year. {356}

Nevertheless it may fairly be said that the reference in Newman's inaugural address to those saints 'who did most when they fancied themselves least prosperous and died without being permitted to see the fruit of their labours' was, in some respects, singularly apposite. The painful experiment afforded Newman an incentive to write at the call of duty on the most vital question of the hour for the interests of the Church—namely, how a thoroughly liberal education could be possible for Catholics, with their tenacity to tradition and strict views as to the rights of ecclesiastical authority, in face of the fresh vista of discoveries and the new view of the world which scientific history and physical science were opening up. Without such a call, as he often said, he could not bring himself to write at all. And without experience of the actual conditions of a Catholic University he could hardly have dealt with it practically and successfully.

I shall first set forth briefly the events which contributed to the failure of the experiment of Newman's Rectorship, and I will then give some analysis of his principal contributions to the science of Catholic education.

Although Newman believed that the success of the University was, according to all human calculations, almost impossible, still he meant to do his very best to falsify his own prediction. He bargained at the outset for a free hand as the only chance of carrying through what appeared so unpromising, and he regarded his position as a Bishop (as we have seen) to be quite essential. It would give him just that status which he required for dealing with a hierarchy whose habits of absolute rule might otherwise have denied him the required independence.

But one thing he had not counted on. It was Cardinal Wiseman and not the Irish Bishops who had induced the Holy Father to promise him a Bishopric. It was Cardinal Wiseman who had asked to be allowed to consecrate him. Those very traditions among the Irish Bishops which made the position of Bishop so necessary to him made it also, it would seem, unwelcome to some of them. And they stayed further proceedings in the matter by their representations in Rome. Let us read the story as told in Newman's own Notes: {357}

'When I saw Dr. Ullathorne first on his return from Rome, between June 8th and 12th (1854) he had said: "Why are you not consecrated? it depends on you. You have to name the time, &c., &c." I perplexed him by my answer that I had not received the Briefs or any official intelligence of the Pope's intention.

'But long before this Dr. Cullen knew that I was not to receive the honour proposed. I judge so from the way in which he commented on the University Brief of March 20th. He had sent me word January 19th that the Pope most probably would accompany the issuing of the Brief by some "mark of distinction" in my favour, and Cardinal Wiseman told him distinctly that that distinction was elevation to the Episcopal dignity. To this I was to offer no opposition. But now, showing me the University Brief, he pointed out to me the words: "Newman, egregiis animi dotibus ornatus" &c., and said in an awkward and hurried manner: "You see how the Pope speaks of you—here is the "distinction."

'It was on the 12th of June that Dr. Manning wrote to me apropos of my formal installation as Rector on June 3rd, in these words:

"I give you joy on the beginning of your great work. On the point affecting yourself, I gathered (!) from the Cardinal (Wiseman) that it was thought right to wait till the University had a formal existence. This I suppose will be accomplished already by this inauguration." I wonder what would have happened if I had refused, as another man might have done, to be installed until I was consecrated.

'The Cardinal never wrote to me a single word, or sent any sort of message to me, in explanation of the change of intention about me, till the day of his death. His letter above transcribed [Note 4] is the beginning and the end of his appearance in this transaction. His concluding words were that he hoped to have the consolation of consecrating me. Nor did Dr. Cullen, nor Dr. Grant, nor Dr. Ullathorne, nor anyone else ever again say one single word on the subject; nor did they make any chance remark by which I have been able to form any idea why that elevation which was thought by Pope, Cardinal, and Archbishop, so expedient for the University, or at least so settled a point, and which was so publicly announced, was suddenly and silently reversed.

'My friends for a long time did not realize the fact [that the scheme was finally abandoned]. In February 1855 Dr. Ullathorne wrote to me: {358}

'"I cannot make out why certain Prelates should have opposed the Pope's intentions already conveyed to yourself—how it can help the University or how it accords with so many precedents practised at Rome especially. I, of course, subscribe to the Pope's judgment, though I do not see through it. I suppose it is but a present delay."

'On my return from Rome in February 1856, Badeley wrote to me under date of March 25th:

'"I was in some hope that, when the Pope got you at the Vatican, he would take the opportunity to make you a Bishop, before he sent you home. When is this to be?"

'Miss Giberne, to my great vexation, one day when she had an audience of the Pope, said without circumlocution what she had also said to Cardinal Antonelli: "Holy Father, why don't you make Father Newman a Bishop?" She reported that he looked much confused and took a great deal of snuff.

'Dr. Ullathorne referred to the catastrophe once in January 1860. He had just returned from Rome, and reported to Father Ambrose St. John the dissatisfaction of some Roman authorities with an article which I had written in the Rambler of July 1859. He said that he had excused me to Cardinal Barnabo on the ground that I had had a great deal to bear in various ways, and that I had been disappointed in a Bishopric. This seemed to make an impression on Cardinal Barnabo, for Dr. Ullathorne's report was that, if I went to Rome and explained matters to the satisfaction of the Authorities, there was the prospect of my returning to England a Bishop.

'For myself, I never asked anyone a single question from first to last on the subject, first of the delay and then of the abandonment of the intention. It never occupied my thoughts. The prospect of it faded out of my mind, as the delay was more and more prolonged. I felt that to be a Bishop then (in Ireland) would have singularly helped me in my work, but I should never have been able to resign if I had taken such wages; I might have been in Ireland till now. I am ever thankful to St. Philip for having saved me from this. "Sic me servavit Apollo."'

The extraordinary apparent discourtesy of the proceedings just narrated undoubtedly cast a shadow on Newman's work from the beginning. Moreover, while he disdained to move a finger in the matter, his anticipations were verified, and {359} the practical independence which he demanded as the condition of any chance of success for the University was not accorded to him. He found, on the contrary, that he was expected at every turn to get leave from the Bishops before acting in his official capacity. And if he omitted to do so he did not obtain from them the support on which he had counted.

At the very outset, when the University Professors were being engaged, Newman had found that the Archbishop was jealous of his English appointments, although Irishmen were in a large majority on his staff [Note 5]. Dr. Cullen wrote a letter on September 30, 1854, with respect to Mr. Ornsby and Mr. Stewart, the Professors of Classics and Ancient History, urging that their positions should be temporary. In his University Journal, Newman notes this communication as 'having for its object apparently to get rid of Ornsby and Stewart.' He replied on October 1. He urged that men of talent were not likely to accept temporary appointments.

Again, when a few days later he notified to the Archbishops his purchase of the Medical School, Dr. {360} McHale complained that the Rector had exceeded his powers [Note 6].

In spite of these initial difficulties the Medical School was opened, and the University was manned with a capable staff, before the formal inauguration of the School of Arts in November 1854, of which I have spoken in the last chapter. The inaugural lecture was a success; and for the moment Newman writes more hopefully to St. John—a brief letter in which his habitual recollection of anniversaries is apparent:

'6, Harcourt St.: Nov. 22nd, 1854.
'I was in bed this day year, and just getting up to preach. Every year brings its changes and mercies. (This day two years I was up on the Achilli matter, and Fr. Joseph took to his bed.) ... Help us with a few Masses.

'I am succeeding here better than I could have expected. Dr. Leahy's inaugural lecture, as mine before it, has done us great good with Queen's College Catholics and Protestants. {361} Ornsby follows tomorrow. Then again, the University Hall is getting on well.'

This hopeful tone was not sustained, although his letters to less intimate friends and his printed utterances in the University Gazette continued, until his actual relinquishment of office, to express what may be termed 'official' hopefulness. This was absolutely necessary, for its absence would have been quite fatal to the realisation of any faint possibility of useful work that existed.

The main causes which his correspondence brings before us of this deepened discouragement after the scheme had had a few months' trial were as follows.

Newman at the outset, as I have said, determined to gain for the laity a substantial position in the management of the University. Mr. More O'Ferrall in October 1854 wrote strongly on this subject to a friend, and Newman, to whom his letter was shown, replied with fullest concurrence, but pleaded that the appointment of lay professors was for the present the utmost step possible in the desired direction.

'If the laity determine to have any immediate recognition of their right in the administration,' he wrote, 'will it be possible to separate this abstract right contended for from a de facto interference with me on the other hand on the part of the hierarchy? One claim will provoke another. As soon as the question of Academical constitution is mooted, I am put under restraint; whereas, if the laity are but forbearing now, is it not certain that, when the provisional state ends, say in three or seven years, the laity, holding a good number of professorships, and being members of the University, must necessarily secure their due weight in the ordinary government? If they join the University now, they secure their due weight in it when it really deserves the name.'

Facts, however, did not point to the realisation of the hopes held out in this letter.

The ablest lay professors were, as I have already intimated, Englishmen or Young Irelanders; and of the influence of both these classes Dr. Cullen was jealous [Note 7]. {362} Early in the day Dr. Cullen urged Newman to keep the University free from the taint of Fenian tenets. 'I trust,' he wrote on January 12, 1855, 'you will make every exertion to keep the University free from all Young Irelandism of which the spirit is so evident in the Nation.'

To neither Englishman nor Young Irelander would Dr. Cullen give any power he could help. This soon became perfectly clear, and it meant the absence of lay influence. The consequences of this were soon felt. 'You do not see much of the laity,—I do,' Mr. Scratton wrote to Newman in March 1855. 'I may tell you we are losing their support; and if the University is to be worth anything, we cannot do without them. Already James O'Ferrall declares he will subscribe no longer; and he will not ever contribute to the support of the University again unless he sees "things" as he calls it, "put into proper order." This means, unless he sees that the laity have a fair share of the government of the University, and unless he sees that the business part of the University is, to a great extent, in the hands of laymen. More O'Ferrall, O'Reilly, Barrington, and others sympathise strongly in the same view, especially the first.'

Next among the reasons for discouragement was the confirmation of Newman's fear that Dr. Cullen would not accord him the freedom for which he had stipulated in the appointment of Professors. The appointments of Ornsby and Stewart had been reluctantly assented to by Dr. Cullen, and now he declined to sanction the appointment of Mr. Thomas Arnold [Note 8] as Professor of Literature. Newman wrote for advice to Manning on this point, speaking thus early in the day of resigning the appointment, which he had only actively held for a few months. Manning's reply shows that he considered that Newman's fears as to the significance of the objection to Mr. Arnold's appointment were somewhat exaggerated. But it also brings before us how distinctly the University was at that time contemplated as in intention the educational centre for English Catholics as well as Irish; and he suggested the transference of its site to England itself. {363}

'I showed your letter to Hope [Note 9] and Bellasis'—so Manning wrote in reply on April 12, 1855—'and I think their mind was as follows:

'1. That, if the present arrangement by which you have real power in the selection of men be destroyed by the influence of the opposite section, it would place you in a position in which you could not continue,—but,

'2. That this is not the state of the facts; nor, as we thought from all we hear of Rome, likely to be so; and that, as yet, there seems no danger of such an alternative: again,

'3. That if such a state of facts should arise, it would be advisable, before you give the slightest expression to your thought as to the future, to go in person to Rome, and to lay before the Holy Father the whole case from your point of view; with its consequent bearing on yourself.

'4. Lastly I add what has been always in my mind:

'If you should find the national element in Ireland insuperable, would it not be well to reconsider the site of the University? All your arguments of centrality would apply to the west coast of England as much as to the east of Ireland. From the first I have rather acquiesced than assented to the present site, except as a balance to the Queen's Colleges. In the sense of your paper on Attica in the 2nd and 3rd University Gazette, England is even more central to the Anglo-Saxon than Ireland.

'The difficulties of contributors would be overcome by the motives which would satisfy the Holy See.

'This alternative would, I hope, be considered before that of your resignation.'

A third source of constant difficulty which Newman notes was that, even apart from refusals to endorse his Professorial appointments, the Rector could get no answer at all from Dr. Cullen as to the arrangements which the starting of a new institution constantly called for [Note 10]. {364}

The above difficulties belong to the first few months of the existence of the University. The sense of a great lack of public interest in the scheme (the chief cause of its failure) deepened in the second year—1856. Hardly any members of the best Irish families came. 'We never have had Irish youths,' Newman writes to Mr. Pollen in 1857, 'except one or two. Barnewall, Errington, White, I suspect are all. The rest are burses, English, Scotch, foreigners.' And the representative English Catholics as a body would not take up the new University at all. Such English students as came were chiefly the children of converts, who had personal reasons for supporting Newman. This was discouraging, and promised little for the future.

'I suppose one initial mistake,' Newman wrote to a friend, 'was the not associating the English Bishops in the work—for they in consequence have shown us no interest at all. Another and greater has been not courting the laity. You recollect that, when I wanted to form a merely honorary list of lay members, Propaganda (I suppose at Dr. Cullen's suggestion) stopped it. The Irish Bishops can command the poorer portion of the community, and through it the funds necessary; but they have little or no influence with the classes which furnish the students. And there has been the hitch. And they don't seem to have felt this.'

Further, Newman found among English Catholics hankerings after Oxford in view of the recent relaxation of University rules in their favour. And he felt that if English Catholics as a body went to Oxford all hope of a new Louvain at Dublin was at an end. For Louvain existed and flourished in virtue of the universal refusal of Belgian Catholics to frequent the State Universities.

Whether or no the above-mentioned difficulties would have diminished in time, Newman's resignation was hastened on by another cause—namely, the difference between himself {365} and Dr. Cullen in their conception of what the University should be.

One who knew Dr. Cullen intimately has supplied some particulars of his career which help us to understand this side of the situation.

Dr. Cullen received his early theological training in the Rome of Leo XII.—a Pope of liberal mind, a patron of letters, the friend and admirer of the bold innovator, Lamennais, in the days of the fame of the Essai sur l'indifférence. Cullen's actus publicus—his public disputation for the Doctor's degree—was undertaken during Leo's pontificate. But all Cullen's enthusiasm was reserved for the Pope who, after the brief Pontificate of Pius VIII., succeeded—namely, Gregory XVI. The Pontiff, a Benedictine, educated in all the discipline of monastic training, came to the Papal Throne in 1830—the year of the revolution, and at a time when the Carbonari and other secret societies menaced Italy. He was the friend of Metternich and the Austrian domination. Nationalism in Italy meant for him revolution. To invoke 'liberty' was to play with edged tools. It was he who condemned Lamennais and the Avenir in the celebrated Encyclical Mirari vos. A policy of repression was adopted by him in the political and intellectual order alike. His attitude embodied that ideal of the Church as being in a state of siege which has so largely prevailed since the Reformation. Liberties must be curtailed, and a dictatorship established, to save the republic from its foes. Measures of reform were abhorrent to him as opening the door to a freedom which might issue in he knew not what. To vindicate the rights of the Church and the supremacy of the Curia in Rome, and of the clergy elsewhere, was congenial to him. The Holy See was strong enough still to be on occasion very peremptory in its dealings with the Powers of the world, and Cullen never wearied of describing the look of surprised abashment on the face of the Czar of Russia as he passed through an ante-camera in the Vatican after an audience of three-quarters of an hour, in which Pope Gregory took him to task for the ill-treatment of the Catholics Poles in his dominions.

Cullen entered into the battle against 'mixed education' con amore. But with him this meant a policy of ultra-conservatism, {366} and of ecclesiastical predominance in the new University. Let it be said at the outset that, apart from this University question, Cullen had a very considerable success in a work which had the sympathy of Newman himself. He largely destroyed the Gallican spirit in Ireland, and introduced among the clergy a new loyalty to the Holy See. His efforts at raising the disciplinary tone of the priesthood were signal and successful. His influence at Rome was so great that he practically nominated Bishop after Bishop—the only exceptions ultimately to those who were his approved candidates being Dr. McHale, Dr. Delany of Cork, and Dr. Moriarty of Kerry. If his fixed ideals did not correspond entirely to the world of fact, they expressed important principles which he urged with sometimes wearisome iteration. His pastorals harped again and again on the same notes—the secret societies (Fenians, Freemasons, Carbonari, and Ribbonmen being all bracketed together), the lectures of Dr. Barlow of Trinity College in which eternal punishment was denied, and mixed education—which if it sent Catholics to be taught by Dr. Barlow must be indeed dangerous to their faith. He infused, it may perhaps be said, a new zeal, and at the same time a measure of new intolerance and narrowness, into the Irish clergy. He refused to sit on the National School Board as Dr. Murray had done. He lost 500l. rather than nominate fresh teachers to the National Schools. Again, he associated far less with non-Catholics than his predecessors had done, and, except on a few State occasions, was not to be seen at dinner at Dublin Castle. He was a man of decided ability, strong purpose, and great piety. Few will deny that he was narrow. But he was kind to his clergy and was known as a true and apostolic priest. His appearance may be well pictured by those who have seen his statue at Marlborough Street Church. Though tall, the effect of his height was somewhat diminished by a slight stoop.

Such was the man who had invoked Newman's aid in the struggle against 'mixed education.' But it became more and more plain that the two men thus united had different objects at heart. In Cullen's eyes the scheme was predominantly ecclesiastical. And he desired the new institution to be entirely under his own control. The Professors, in his view, {367} should be priests, owing him strict obedience. He wished to have zealous and pious priests; their intellectual equipment was a matter of secondary importance. The undergraduates were to be amenable to a quasi-seminarist discipline, and were thus to be preserved unspotted from modern thought—theological, literary, and political. Theology was to have the control of the sciences, as in days of old. In the Brief in which the Pope finally defined the main lines of the institution (a Brief which Newman supposed to be practically drawn up by Dr. Cullen) the new institution was called Lyceum and Gymnasium—phrases pointing to a college or lay seminary rather than a University.

Newman's conception materially differed from Dr. Cullen's, and on some points was directly opposed to it. He desired that the laity should have their full influence in the institution. He desired a University of the Louvain type, as he expressed it, in which scientific experts were chosen for the staff and given the freedom requisite for thorough efficiency. And he dreaded lest Dr. Cullen's type might prevail. 'In that case,' he writes to Mr. Ornsby, 'it will simply be priest-ridden. I mean men who do not know literature and science will have the direction of the teaching ... I cannot conceive the Professors taking part in this. They will be simply scrubs.' Again his idea was essentially that of a University with freedom and capacity of development, and not a mere college. The influence he desired for the laity was really part of this conception, as we see from a letter to Mr. Ornsby.

'On both sides the Channel,' Newman wrote to Mr. Ornsby, 'the deep difficulty is the jealousy and fear which is entertained in high quarters of the laity. Dr. Cullen seems to think that "Young Irelandism" is the natural product of the lay mind everywhere, if let to grow freely; and I wish I could believe that he is singular in his view. Nothing great or living can be done except when men are self-governed and independent; this is quite consistent with a full maintenance of ecclesiastical supremacy. St. Francis Xavier wrote to Father Ignatius on his knees; but who will say that St. Francis was not a real centre of action?'

Religious influences, again, were essential; the presence {368} of theology was essential; but Newman deprecated—we shall in a subsequent chapter cite his own words—any jealous ecclesiastical supervision of scientific investigations, or any narrowing of the conception of literature. Science and literature each had its own natural and independent sphere. Scientific investigation must be, he held, free from external interference. So, too, literature was to be the literature of the nations—of the Greeks, the Romans, the English—not of one religion. The institution was, moreover, to aim primarily not at religious training, but at imparting knowledge for its own sake. It must be essentially a University and not a seminary. The University Brief—believed to have been drawn up by Dr. Cullen—held different language. Newman quotes its words in his Notes. The founders of the University are exhorted in it 'to make "divina nostra religio tanquam anima totius litterariae institutionis" in the University; that is,' Newman adds, 'the form. "Omnes disciplinae,"' Newman continues, 'are to go forward "in the most strict league with religion"; that is, with the assumption of Catholic doctrine in their intrinsic treatment; and the Professors are directly "to mould totis viribus the youth to piety and virtue, and to guard them in literature and science in conformity with the Church's teaching." I wrote on a different idea' (he adds), 'my "Discourses on University Education" in 1852.'

In opposing 'mixed education,' then, the two men had very different conceptions. Speaking broadly, Dr. Cullen seems to have aimed at the exclusion of all that was dangerous in modern thought; Newman rather at such mental and moral training as would enable Catholics to face dangers which were, in the long run, inevitable.

'If then a University is a direct preparation for this world' (Newman had written in his lectures on the Scope and Nature of University Education), 'let it be what it professes. It is not a convent; it is not a seminary; it is a place to fit men of the world for the world. We cannot possibly keep them from plunging into the world with all its ways and principles and maxims, when their time comes; but we can prepare them against what is inevitable; and it is not the way to learn to swim in troubled waters never to have gone into them. Proscribe, I do not merely say particular authors, particular passages, but Secular Literature as {369} such; cut out from your class books all broad manifestations of the natural man; and these manifestations are waiting for your pupil's benefit at the very doors of your lecture-room in living and breathing substance ... You have refused him the masters of human thought, who would in some sense have educated him, because of their incidental corruption; you have shut up from him those whose thoughts strike home to our hearts; whose words are proverbs, whose names are indigenous to all the world, who are the standards of the mother tongue, and the pride and boast of their countrymen, Homer, Ariosto, Cervantes, Shakespeare, because the old Adam smelt rank in them; and for what have you reserved him? You have given him a liberty unto the multitudinous blasphemy of the day; you have made him free of its newspapers, its reviews, its magazines, its novels, its controversial pamphlets, of its Parliamentary debates, its law proceedings, its platform speeches, its songs, its drama, its theatre, of its enveloping, stifling atmosphere of death. You have succeeded but in this—in making the world his University.' [Note 11]

The Archbishop then gradually realised a very unwelcome prospect. In place of a new centre for enforcing ecclesiastical rule in Ireland, he saw the possibility of something like a Catholic intellectual republic. His ideal of a staff of Irish priest-professors was opposed by Newman's desire that a large proportion of the professors should be Englishmen and not in Orders. And as to those Irishmen who were to be chosen, he found that laymen were preferred to priests, and, worse than all, that the Nationalists, as including the most able men, were regarded with special favour. The quasi-seminary life he had planned for the students in his 'gymnasium' was to be set aside for the free habits of Oxford undergraduates. It was proposed to license a theatre especially for their recreation. Instead of finding his own supreme authority an acknowledged fact, he learnt early in the day that Newman desired to have for Chancellor an English prelate—Cardinal Wiseman.

Probably from the time of the lectures of 1852, which were well received by the Queen's College party, Dr. Cullen to some extent dreaded his rashly invoked ally. 'He had hoped,' writes the late Bishop Patterson in a letter to myself, {370} 'that he had found a splendid horse to do his work against the Queen's Colleges, but now he began to regard it as a Pegasus with wings and beyond his control. He saw fire coming from its nostrils, and while its feet nervously pawed the ground, Cullen stood by in dread of some new and unexpected flight into a medium beyond his reach or understanding.' Newman on his side felt that he was not trusted, and was irritated.

'Dr. Cullen wishes well to the University,' Newman wrote to Mr. Ornsby, 'but while he is as ignorant as anybody how to do good he has not the heart to have perfect confidence in anyone; as if I should determine to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, but be quite unwilling to take hints from Gladstone or Disraeli as to my measures. Dr. Leahy will trust a man; Dr. Cullen will not. Here is the origo mali; an Archbishop without trust in anyone. I wonder he does not cook his own dinners.'

Newman in April 1856 definitely announced to the Archbishop that he meant to resign in the following July year. 'Though at first he was startled or rather surprised,' Newman writes to St. John, 'he quite acquiesced—and I consider I have gained a great step.' Newman was indeed at this moment harassed by fears which proved unfounded. In addition to his difficulties with Dr. Cullen, there was the fact that the ratification of the Rector's proceedings by the other Bishops was necessary. This could not take place until they met. And Dr. Cullen had kept delaying the meeting. Newman ascribed this delay to a fear of Dr. McHale, who was known to be no friend to the University. He wrote as follows to St. John:

'6, Harcourt Street, April 18th, 1856.
'I suppose the division here in the Episcopate and in the clergy is greater than ever it was; and I think Archbishop Cullen does not call the Bishops together as anticipating that they would confirm nothing that I have done. Dr. McHale has made a point, whenever he has had an opportunity, of protesting against every one of my acts, and I know that Dr. Cullen has said to a man who was going to accept an appointment from me: "How do you know it will be confirmed?"

'Poor Dr. Cullen! I should not wonder if (he) is quite mastered by anxiety. The great fault I find with him is that he makes no one his friend, because he will confide in nobody, {371} and will be considerate to nobody. Everyone feels that he is emphatically close, and while this conduct repels would-be friends, it fills enemies with vague suspicions of horrible conspiracies on his part against Bishops, Priests, and the rights of St. Patrick. And he is as vehement against the young Irelanders, as against the McHalites, and against the McHalites as against the English.'

And at last the Bishops did meet, and Newman's fears of fresh difficulties from Dr. McHale—the Lion of the West as he was called—were not realised. Newman attended the meeting armed for the fray, and prepared to hold his own against the redoubtable John of Tuam. But he received nothing but courtesy and kindness.

DR. NEWMAN TO FATHER ST. JOHN

'Harcourt Street: June 26th, 1856. half past four.
'I have just come from the Synodal Meeting. I was up before the Bishops over an hour. I was perfectly cool; so much so that I longed to be attacked. Others too said definitely of the Archbishop of Tuam what Dr. Cullen, in the letter I sent you this morning, said vaguely of "some Bishops." However, he kept a dead silence. Dr. Derry, his friend, asked some questions, but in the most courteous, pleasantest manner. I wished the Lion to attack me, but you see I am not destined to be a Gérard.'

'I am told,' he adds in his next letter, 'that the lion generally turns tail when met and looked in the face.'

But indeed Dr. McHale evidently had no idea of being otherwise than personally courteous. He met Newman accidentally at Maynooth. 'When I kissed his ring,' writes Newman, 'he shook hands with such vehement cordiality as to punish my nose.'

The third year of Newman's residence began in November 1856, and two letters to Henry Wilberforce (who was now editor of the Weekly Register) give his feelings at that time and an incidental picture of his busy life in Dublin:

'The Oratory, Birmingham: October 21/56.
'Thank you for your affectionate notice of me in your last Register ...

'Well, my work I trust is getting to an end ... for my third and last year of residence is beginning, which will make {372} my sixth of active exertion. Six years is a long time in any man's life and a serious portion of a man's who is between 50 and 60. I cannot conceive that I shall be formally told to go on—and to anything but a formal order I shall be insensible.

'If I am driven into a corner, from the urgency of those who wish me to stay, I shall insist on quasi non-residence—but, to tell the truth, I am far from certain there are not a good many persons who wish me gone. Indeed who would feel any great concern at my going, among persons in authority, except the good Primate, Dr. Dixon, and Dr. Moriarty? Dr. Leahy, the Bishop, would be sorry too—but who else? ... I am speaking of Superiors, not of those under me, or the Professors.

'How long is it since I saw you? You are now one of my very oldest friends, for those who were before you have for the most part disappeared. I have two or three, or fewer, school friends. One of them, Westmacott, lost his father lately, and I wrote to him, and had back a very affectionate answer, poor fellow. Then there is old Ogle at Oxford, who declined to see me, not so long ago—and old Tom Short and Wilson of Trinity. Hawkins too and Whately and the rest, who don't seem very cordial—do they? So I am obliged to put up with such as you.'

'6, Harcourt Street, Dublin: Nov. 11th, 1856.
'Carissime,—Gladly would I assist you in the way you speak of, were it not all one with careering to the moon. Alas! You do not realize my work. My chattels stand about my room—the same confusion as on the night I came, near three weeks ago, from my inability to find leisure for removing them to their places. My letters are a daily burden, and did I not answer them by return of post, they would soon get my head under water and drown me. Every hour or half-hour of the day I have people calling on me. I have to entertain strangers at dinner, I have to attend inaugural Lectures—four last week. I have to stop Professors resigning, and Houses revolting. I have to keep accounts and find money, when I have none. Besides the book I have just published at Longman's, I have three reprinting which I am reading thro' and correcting, and I have to provide four Sermons in print by St. Paul's day, that for Sunday week not having the first word written yet. I have to lecture on Latin Composition, and examine for Exhibitions. In 10 days I rush to Birmingham for their sheer want of me. I then have to throw myself into quite a fresh world. And I have the continual pain of our Fathers sighing if I am {373} not there, and priests and Professors looking black if I am not here. I grieve to say, I am not up to doing anything for you now, tho' I should wish it. J. H. N.'

Newman's old Oxford friends, as Mr. Capes and Henry Wilberforce, still cherished the idea of a Louvain University for England under Newman's direction, and trusted that, even if he resigned, his mantle would fall on another Englishman, and their hopes would yet be realised. Newman wrote to Mr. Capes on February 1, 1857, pointing out the apathy of the English and suggesting ways in which, even short of at once frequenting the University, they could help it. The letter ends with expressions of hopefulness as to the future of the University which he used to all except his most intimate friends. They have a vehemence which contrasts most curiously with the hopelessness of the situation as he viewed it looking back later on. But indeed the letter expresses a detachment and indifference which point to his not owning to himself at the time the disappointment of which he afterwards wrote so bitterly.

'I know myself,' he wrote, 'if no one else knows, what little interest I take in the success or failure of schemes in which I am engaged. If I needed it, the failure of Puseyism and the advance of years have been sufficient to secure me against over-earnestness in working, and the zest of business. I am working very hard, but I take as little (natural or human) interest in it as I do in the Cotton plantations of India. I have never doubted a moment of our success. I am quite satisfied with our progress. To look back 2 years and see the substantial improvement of things is wonderful, and should make us very thankful. My own house has been blessed from the first in a most stupendous way, and never had I a greater proof of God's mercy. Everything I have done has succeeded—the notion of disappointment, the very shade of despondency does not come on me. My strength and my congregation will not let me go on. I am getting old, but I have had no troubles—so that, in complaining of the country gentlemen both of England and of Ireland, I do it, as I might criticise a piece of Latin composition. Still, I do complain, and I say that you cannot have a University till the gentlemen take it up.'

To Manning he had written two weeks earlier, speaking of his resignation as imminent and inevitable: {374}

'Ben Harrison years ago rightly applied to me my own line about St. Gregory Nazianzen, "Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst not rule." I have done my work here. I have got together a number of very clever men; and they pull well together—but of course they want a strong hand over them; they want an Irishman too; and to deal with the hierarchy a Bishop is wanted. Dr. Moriarty is the man—he is a calm, prudent, firm man—has had much to do with governing—and is a friend of all parties … Were Dr. Moriarty Rector, of course I would aid him, if he wished it, as much as ever I could.

'Another plan I have heard, was, for me to be non-resident like an Oxford Chancellor, and the Vice-Rector to be the acting man. I don't think the Irish would bear this.'

Newman definitely resigned in March 1857, naming November 14 as the date on which his resignation was to take effect. In the event he continued for another year as non-resident Rector, on conditions to be shortly stated. Difficulties had arisen in the Edgbaston Oratory owing to the continued absence of the Father Superior, and his resignation was made quite final by a letter of recall from the community, in the sending of which Newman in the circumstances acquiesced [Note 12]. His letters of resignation to the {375} Bishops have a curious interest from the careful graduation of their expression. The Bishops are addressed in a descending scale of cordiality according to their past conduct towards himself, beginning with Dr. Dixon, Archbishop of Armagh, with whom his relations had been most friendly and to whom his expressions of gratitude are emphatic, and ending with Archbishop McHale, his avowed enemy, to whom he makes a brief and bare announcement of the fact [Note 13].

The letters to the Bishops were private, but the secret leaked out. Dr. Taylor, Newman's first University Secretary and warm friend, wrote expressing his anxiety at the rumour which had reached him that the termination of his Rectorship was at hand, and asked for its confirmation or denial. Newman's reply was as follows:

'April 1857.
'Thank you for your very kind letter. It is quite true, in answer to your question, that I cannot long remain here, but it is from no "disgust" on my part, as you suppose, but from the prospect of old age and the many claims which are made at present on my time and strength. I came here only for a season. My Congregation at Birmingham only spared me for a season. You recollect how eager I was to get to work. This was because I saw precious time going which was irrevocable. When this Session ends I shall have given six years to the University. At my time of life six years is as long as twelve years of a younger man. For six years shall I have given up my confessional and the other duties of an Oratorian. For six years all my other work, all my reading, has been suspended. The first three years were wasted, indeed, as far as active proceedings here went, but they were not, therefore, the less lost to my Congregation.

'I have ever said that I could be here but for a time. In 1852, in my University Discourses, I said: "Neither you nor I must ever be surprised if the Hand of Him with Whom are the springs of life and death, weighs heavy on me." {376}

'In the Catholic Gazette in 1854 I said I only "aspired to the preliminary task of breaking the ground and clearing the foundations of the future."

'In my report to the Bishops in 1855 I spoke of "the time being so limited, which at my age, and with my engagements elsewhere, I can hope to be allowed to employ" in their Lordships' service.

'It is near a year since I mentioned the term of my stay distinctly to Dr. Cullen.

'I could not do more than all this; to have stated publicly my intentions of going would have tended to defeat the good of my being here at all ...

'I have set it off. This is all I propose to do. I cannot longer carry on both my Dublin work, and my Birmingham work. I cannot bear the fatigue of going to and fro between England and Ireland, and the University has had out of me pretty nearly all it can squeeze.'

Many of the Bishops expressed to Newman the deepest regret at his impending resignation. Newman himself was still attached to the scheme and had made valued friends among his colleagues. In the course of the correspondence and interviews which ensued, he came to the conclusion that if the Archbishops would dispense with his residence in Dublin, and would let him appoint a Vice-Rector whom he could trust as his delegate, and be content with his visiting Dublin only occasionally, he might, for a time, prolong his tenure of the Rectorship. The date of his recall by the Birmingham Oratory was May 5. On the 12th he had interviews with both Dr. Cullen and Dr. Leahy, and made it clear on the latter occasion that a compromise was possible. His chief insistence was on freedom to appoint a delegate Rector—layman or priest as he should prefer. Both interviews are described in letters to Ambrose St. John:

'May 12th, 1857: half past 2 p.m.
'The poor Archbishop (Cullen) is just gone. I say "poor" because he was evidently so nervous and distressed as to melt me internally, though I was very stiff or very much moved, both at once perhaps, during the short interview.

'First he begged me to stop,—for everyone said I must—for three years more so as to make six from the opening of the University. {377}

'I reminded him how I had urged him to start sooner, for I had lost my first years in waiting. Also, that I had told him a year ago what was to be.

'Next he said Propaganda would give me a dispensation, he was sure, of non-residence (at Birmingham).

'I said I was sure that the whole Oratory would go off to Rome to present in person an expostulation rather than let such dispensation pass sub silentio.

'Then he said some arrangement perhaps might be made, by which I should be for a longer time at Birmingham, and a Vice-Rector might reside continuously in Dublin.

'I said I was sure the Fathers, as I myself, would do everything possible to serve an undertaking which they expected so much from.

'Lastly, he said that perhaps some of the Bishops, perhaps an Archbishop, might write to the Birmingham Congregation. I said that I knew well how grateful the Birmingham Fathers would be for such condescension; for myself I felt extreme gratitude to the Bishops, some of whom had sent me most touching letters in answer to my announcement of resigning.

'All this took place with pauses of silence on his part and mine;—and, when I spoke, I spoke with great momentum. I say all this to bring the scene before you.

'Then he rose, and I rang the bell; and there must have been something unusual in our faces, for, when Frederic answered it, he (F.) looked frightened.

'He then said that he had spoken to some Bishops about my Church—delay had been unavoidable—but he thought they would buy it for the University and they would settle it when they met a few weeks later.

'I think your answer should be most courteous, warm and grateful. Apologetic on the ground of the real need of a Superior at Birmingham, expressive of your desire to do all you could do, saying that you answered without delay out of respect to them, and that you wished to be allowed maturely to consider this proposition.'

'Dr. Leahy has just called,' Newman writes to St. John on the same day as above. 'He began on the Rectorship at once. He was kind and appreciative and earnest, as much as my warmest friends could desire; said that I could not understand the full confidence the Bishops had in me; that I was the man, he verily believed, intended by Providence, before I was a Catholic, for the work—that I should destroy {378} it if I went,—that he would not—could not—believe I was to go, &c. &c.

'I showed him the Congregation's Decree of May 5th, which was a simple quietus to him, as it has been to everyone to whom I have shown it.

'He said that he hoped I would persuade the Congregation to spare me, at least a year or two longer.

'I said I could not in conscience; that no words could do justice to the intensity with which I felt the evil of my absence; that we had all borne it very long; that no one could tell how long my life was to be; that I could not leave the world with a good conscience if I had not given my last years to St. Philip. On the other hand, that the setting up of a University was the work of years, the work of a life; that I could only be here at most a year or two more or less; that the bishops should get a man twenty years younger, &c. &c.'

Newman made it clear to Dr. Leahy that the only hope of his continuance in office was that the Archbishops should consent to his residence being only occasional. But meanwhile he urged strongly what had been in his mind for a year past, that Dr. Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, was the man above all others suited to the post of Rector.

'That collisions are ahead, perhaps between Clergy and Laity, I do not deny,' he wrote to a friend. 'The breach between them in Ireland is fearful—the University may bring it out.' In such collisions he, an Englishman, felt that he should be powerless from want of knowledge. Dr. Moriarty, on the other hand, had both the knowledge and the tact required. He had in the previous November written strongly to Dr. Moriarty himself.

'You alone,' he wrote, 'can amalgamate the various elements of the University; you alone can effect the due subordination of those elements to the Bishops. For myself, even were I Bishop and Irishman, I have not the talent of ruling; I never had; I never have ruled; and never have been in a position of authority before. I can begin things, and I never aspired to do more.'

However, the question of a successor to Newman was, in the event, postponed.

Dr. Leahy was about this time appointed to the Arch-bishopric of Cashel; and his intimacy with Newman helped {379} to a better understanding between the representatives of the hierarchy and the Rector. Ultimately, on August 25, the Archbishops wrote to the Oratory consenting at all events as an experiment for the ensuing year to the compromise which Newman had suggested. Newman's residence at Dublin was to be only intermittent [Note 14].

Yet the plan of a Rector who should live at a distance proved unmanageable, and he soon regretted the compromise.

'I am in a sad state of despondency,' he writes to Mr. Ornsby on December 21. 'On the spot I know what you all think, and can form my judgment and act by the popular feeling, which is indispensable in the case of a person in my place. But here at a distance I am walking in the dark, and may any moment be doing a disservice or committing an offence when I mean just the reverse.

'I assure you I dread most extremely misunderstandings arising between the Professors, &c., and me, from no one's {380} fault, but merely from the necessary collisions which take place when men are acting on each other three hundred miles off. I say to myself: "How much better to resign now while people like me, than to outlive my popularity and leave unpleasant associations behind me!"

In point of fact, the scheme of a non-resident Rector did not really satisfy Dr. Cullen, and Newman's tenure of office was practically at an end at the time we have reached. The occasion of his final resignation eleven months later will be duly chronicled later on. But he ceased to rule the University actively after he left Ireland in the autumn of 1857 [Note 15]. And this is, therefore, the suitable place for inserting the interesting account he has left in the Retrospective Notes of his differences with Dr. Cullen and the real causes of his ultimate retirement, as distinct from the events which immediately led to it:

'I will briefly state what were the main points on which Dr. Cullen complains of me, and I of Dr. Cullen:

'First, from the first he quarrelled with my partial residence at Dublin. He thought that, with the exception of a fair annual holiday, I ought to be at my post all through the year. He did not recognize I had duties elsewhere. He thought I ought to give them up. So ingrained was this idea in his mind that, when our Congregation, in refusing to continue my leave of absence, pointedly limited their refusal to an absence such as had been "for the last three years," opening the door to negotiation for a residence not so strict as mine had been, he did not avail himself of it; and when I directly called, through Dr. Leahy, his attention to this middle way, proposing a residence for some weeks during each term, he said it might be tried as an experiment for one year. And, when nothing in consequence came of this proposal and I remained on without taking any salary till a successor was appointed, suddenly he, and Dr. Leahy with him, abruptly called me into residence, which was the immediate cause of my resignation. I do not say he was not right in wishing for a Rector who had no duties elsewhere; but, if that was his judgment, he ought not to have asked me to be Rector. But I think he fancied that the superior attractions of the Rectorship would lead to my separating {381} from the Oratory, and, if not, to my bringing over the whole Oratory to Dublin. I think this difficulty was a continual fret to him, and accounted, to his judgment, for whatever went amiss in the University. But what I think was the real serious cause of distance, jealousy, distrust, and disapproval, as regards me and my doings, was the desire I had to make the laity a substantive power in the University. Here I was reprehensible in two respects.

'First, I wished the gentry whose sons were to be taught by us to have the financial matters of the institution in their hands. The trustees of the property must, I know, be ecclesiastics; but what I felt about was the expenditure. And in two ways: (1) I thought that they had a right to the management of the current accounts, because else those accounts would not be kept in order at all; (2) there would be no auditing and no knowledge of what was spent; it would be, as I supposed it in my first report, like putting one's hands into a bag. All the time I was there I in vain repeatedly assailed Dr. Cullen on the necessity of a Finance Committee, and this was a great source of suspicion, of irritation to him. It made me indignant to find how little there seemed to be of responsibility in the expenditure. I did not choose to act in this way. It was laying me, a foreigner, open to imputations. Years afterwards the question might arise, how had I spent the money ...

'I believed laymen would put an end to this, and, therefore, I wished the account to be in lay hands. Moreover, I thought that such an arrangement would conciliate the laity and would interest them in the University more than anything else. They were treated like good little boys; were told to shut their eyes and open their mouths and take what we gave them—and this they did not relish.

'But a cause of offence to Dr. Cullen, far greater than my desire of a lay Finance Committee, was my countenance of those whom he considered Young Irelanders, and generally of nationalists; and to these he added a very different party,—the friends of Lucas [Note 16],—up to the Archbishop of Tuam. I never, of course, would give up Lucas as a friend. I differed from him, but I thought him an honest good man. Dr. Cullen's treatment of him at Rome is too painful for me to talk of. As soon as the Archbishop thought I was on what may be called "speaking terms" with him, he grew cold towards me. He warned me against him, and I, of course, would not be warned. {382}

'But again, there was a knot of men who in 1848 had been quasi rebels; they were clever men and had cooled down, most of them. I did not care much for their political opinions. Dr. Moriarty introduced them to me, and I made them Professors. They are the ablest men who have belonged to the University; such are Professor O'Curry and Professor Sullivan. I can never be sorry for asking their assistance; not to take them would have been preposterous. There you had good men,—Irishmen; did not Dr. Cullen wish Irish? Had he not warned me against English and Scotch? If I did not take men made ready to my hand, desirable on their own account, desirable because their fellows were not to be found, I must put up, if not with English and Scotch, with incapable priests; is this what Dr. Cullen wanted?

'He, however, seems to have been in a great alarm what was coming next. I saw a great deal of Mr. Pigot,—now dead—the Chief Baron's son; he talked like a republican, but he was full of views and a clever man. I had a thought of giving him a law Professorship, or I did. Dr. Cullen brought down with him to me an excellent man, the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr. Walsh, to dissuade me by telling me things against Mr. Pigot. I have forgotten every word he said. It made no impression on me. I daresay he had said and done a number of wild things; he was a fanatic even then; but I did not see that, therefore, I should separate myself from him. But Dr. Cullen always compared Young Ireland to Young Italy, and with the most intense expression of words and countenance assured me they never came right—never—he knew them from his experience of Rome.

'I cannot pursue these things at this distance of time; but the consequence was that Dr. Cullen became alienated from me, and from an early date either did not write to me, or, if ever he did, wrote by a secretary.

'So much on his side of the question. Now as to what I would say in objection to him.

'In truth I have already suggested what I have to say; but I must say for myself that my reasons for separating myself from the University were far broader than any of a personal nature.

'Of course I was very much offended with Dr. Cullen. I could not act because I could not get him to say "yes" or "no" to questions which I asked him; and if I acted without asking, then I displeased him. {383}

'I begged him to substitute persons for himself to whom I might go if it was inconvenient to him to converse or to correspond with me. It was one of those conditions I made as preliminary to my continuing in the Rectorship—but I got no answer beyond that of an incomprehensible silence. I could not go on in such a state of things, and, therefore, I confess that my relations towards Dr. Cullen had much to do with my leaving.

'But there were those more direct and serious difficulties in my remaining which our Fathers put forth in their letter in answer to the three Archbishops ... It was an unfortunate coincidence of untoward events, but so it was, that my residence here (at Birmingham) was absolutely necessary to the welfare of this Oratory, and this is the very thing, as I have said, which Dr. Cullen would not grant.

'This then was the main cause of my leaving, that I could not give to the University that continuous presence which Dr. Cullen wished. His own conduct was a subordinate reason. There was a third still, though it was not of primary influence; still it had a force in reconciling me to my step. It was the fact, which had by this time become so plain, viz., that English Catholics felt no interest at all in the University scheme, and had no intention to make use of it, should it get into shape. I had gone to Ireland on the express understanding that it was an English as well as an Irish University, and the Irish had done all in their power to make it an Irish University, and nothing else. And further, I say, the English Catholics had given it up. It had begun a very little time when Dr. Ullathorne told me, as if a matter in which he acquiesced, that "the English gentlemen would never send their sons to it."

'Now it happened at the end of the year 1857, that Dr. Cullen expressed regret that the Professors did not make greater use of the newspaper press in bringing the University before the public, and urged Mr. Ornsby and others to turn their thoughts to the subject. They were willing, and the only question was how to do it. It occurred to me that it would be well to begin some controversy about the University, so, telling no one but Mr. H. Wilberforce, the editor, I inserted in the Weekly Register a very bitter letter signed "Q in the corner." Ornsby replied, and I wrote as many as four short letters; but to my disgust I found I was beating him. But what it brought out clearly was the English sentiment. Not a word came in advocacy of the {384} University from any English College or centre, and "Q's" letters were, without disavowal of the sentiments which they contained, attributed generally to this or that English priest. I tried to make it up to the University by writing leading articles for four weeks in its defence; but what came home to me clearly was that I was spending my life in the service of those who had not the claim upon me which my own countrymen had; that, in the decline of life, I was throwing myself out of that sphere of action and those connections which I had been forming for myself so many years. All work is good, but what special claim had a University, exclusively Irish, upon my time?'

It has been necessary to give minutely Newman's own account of the incompatibility of his views with those of Dr. Cullen, as very inaccurate accounts have become current. Let it, then, not be forgotten that, apart from the soreness which was quite inevitable when Newman felt that by his action and his inaction Dr. Cullen made the success of the University impossible, a real regard existed between the two men, and a mutual appreciation of the high qualities of each. 'I ever had the greatest, the truest reverence for the good Cardinal Cullen,' Newman wrote in 1879. 'I used to say that his countenance had a light upon it which made me feel as if, during his many years at Rome, all the saints of the Holy City had been looking into it and he into theirs.'

In the foregoing narrative I have given Newman's own account of his 'Irish Campaign,' as he called it, placing the facts in the light in which he saw them. Thus only can their effect on his own mind and history be appreciated. But enough is apparent, even in the record he has himself left, to show that there was another side to much that happened besides that to which he was himself alive. It is clear that while Dr. Cullen, eager to secure his services, had agreed in general terms that the University should be for all English-speaking Catholics, and not merely an Irish institution, this undertaking was not, even by Cullen himself, taken to mean all that Newman supposed. Dr. Cullen's jealousy at the outset of English appointments to professorships makes this clear. And it may be doubted whether the Irish Episcopate in general had any knowledge that such an {385} undertaking had been given. If they had not, a good many events bear a different colour from what they took in Newman's own eyes. Father Neville records as one of Newman's grievances that he wanted Cardinal Wiseman to be Chancellor, and failed to obtain his appointment. Newman himself states in a letter to Ambrose St. John, that he asked Cardinal Wiseman to preach at the opening of the University Church in 1856, and that Wiseman doubted whether the Irish Archbishops would desire it. In the end, Dr. Cullen objected to the proposal. Obviously Cardinal Wiseman's natural position in the Catholic University of the British Isles was one thing—in the Catholic University of Ireland quite another.

We may well hazard the conjecture, that the episode of the proposed bishopric for the new Rector was due to the same difference as to the relations of the University to Ireland. The appointment was obtained from the Pope by the English Primate, Cardinal Wiseman, although it is true that he asked Dr. Cullen's acquiescence on the occasion of a brief meeting at Amiens. It is probable enough that while Cullen did not like to say No there and then, he found on subsequently consulting his colleagues that they considered that such a request should have been made to the Holy Father by none but themselves, and that this view was at once intimated to Rome. Cardinal Wiseman's somewhat impulsive energy had probably gained his point at Rome before these representations came from Ireland, and the Cardinal had at once written to Newman the news of his success. Representations from the Irish Episcopate that the request had been made without their acquiescence, and that the appointment was not judged by them to be expedient, would have great force at Rome. In their light Wiseman's previous action would appear to have been irregular—almost unconstitutional. Wiseman's announcement to Newman that the dignity was obtained had been unofficial, and, accordingly, the matter was allowed by Rome to drop. Rome was not (at all events officially) cognisant of the communication of Wiseman to Newman on the subject, nor of the earlier words of Dr. Cullen to Newman which obviously referred to the bishopric as a settled thing. {386} Both these communications were, of course, vividly present to Newman's own mind, and made him feel his treatment to have been in the highest degree discourteous. Had his friends reported the facts fully in Rome, it is very improbable that the proposed honour would have been any longer withheld—indeed, when Manning spoke of the subject to the Roman authorities in 1860, it was made clear to him that Newman could have the bishopric if he wished for it. But Newman's temperament made it impossible for him to move a finger in the matter, and in a busy world no urgent action was taken by others when the person most closely concerned made no sign.

However, while in this and in other matters much may be said to explain the incidents which tried Newman so acutely, the outstanding fact, so far as his own history is concerned, is that these years—from 1853 to 1858—did much to break his spirit. His temperament was not at any time one that could 'rough it' easily. And he had reached an age when most men of great powers are not struggling against odds and amid rebuffs to construct new social mechanism, but rather have won an assured position in some already constituted institution or career. The hardest struggles are over for most men at fifty. A groove of some kind is attained to. The ordinary course was reversed for Newman. He had not had to rough it in boyhood. He had never had the discipline of a public school. Brilliant success, and a leadership in its kind unparalleled, had come for him at Oxford when he was only thirty-seven years old. He had to begin a new life among strangers at forty-five, as no longer a young man. The 'blessed vision of peace' had given a glow to the first years of his Catholic career, in spite of its trials. His deep sense that he was an instrument in the hands of Providence—that if he were patient the 'kindly light' would show the path which God marked out for him; his expectation that, in spite of obvious difficulties, in God's own way, something equivalent to his great work at Oxford was destined to be revived with all the force of the Catholic Church behind him, long kept him in some measure hopeful. That anticipation had been renewed by his very appointment to the University, as we can see in the letter to Mrs. Froude {387} already cited. It is apparent, too, in the eloquent passage in the first of his preliminary discourses, in which he claims to follow the guidance of the Holy See, in spite of all worldly discouragement, confident that Peter would prove to be on the winning side. True, he was in the decline of life, but a great work might yet be done for God. He might make the Catholic capital city of the Kingdom, as he had made Oxford, a centre of religion as well as of learning. This hope he was slow to abandon—for at his age it might well be the last chance of considerable achievement. He kept using words of hopefulness at a time when trial succeeding trial was accumulating for him the feeling of crushing disappointment which is so patent in his 'Retrospect.' The glow of the 'honeymoon period' passed away in these years. Sadness—at moments something like sourness—came upon him. The University scheme broke down; and though he had appreciative friends in Dublin he failed to influence the life of the town. A population of busy citizens of mature life afforded no real parallel to Oxford. By the town at large he was known as little else than the bearer of a distinguished name. The young men in Ireland, and in England too, apart from the handful of boys at Stephen's Green, knew nothing of him. 'To the rising generation,' he wrote in 1857 to Ambrose St. John, 'to the sons of those who knew me, or read what I wrote 15 or 20 years ago, I am a mere page of history. I do not live to them; they know nothing of me; they have heard my name but they have no associations with it ... It was at Oxford, and by my Parochial Sermons, that I had influence,—all that is past.' As to the University itself, he wrote to Mr. Pollen after his resignation that some of its founders were, 'like Frankenstein, scared at their own monster.'

When he republished his lectures on the 'Scope and Nature of University Education,' he omitted the passage in which he had prophesied the success of the University on the strength of the Pope's command that it should be undertaken. He was too honest not to face facts, and he left among the Retrospective Notes a memorandum in which he stated that the feeling therein expressed had been weakened by the result of the University experiment. {388}

'I had been accustomed,' he wrote, 'to believe that, over and above that attribute of infallibility which attached to the doctrinal decisions of the Holy See, a gift of sagacity had in every age characterised its occupants; so that we might be sure, as experience taught us, without its being a dogma of faith, that what the Pope determined was the very measure, or the very policy, expedient for the Church at the time when he determined. This view I have brought out at some length in my "Rise of Universities," first published in the University Gazette, and in the very first Lecture, as delivered, on "the Nature and Scope of Universities." I am obliged to say that a sentiment which history has impressed upon me, and impresses still, has been very considerably weakened as far as the present Pope, Pius IX., is concerned, by the experience of the result of the policy which his chosen councillors had led him to pursue. I cannot help thinking in particular that, if he had known more of the state of things in Ireland, he would not have taken up the quarrel about the higher education which his predecessor left him, and, if he could not religiously recognise the Queen's Colleges, at least would have abstained from decreeing a Catholic University. I was a poor innocent as regards the actual state of things in Ireland when I went there, and did not care to think about it, for I relied on the word of the Pope, but from the event I am led to think it not rash to say that I knew as much about Ireland as he did.'

All this meant for Newman the deepest pain and disappointment; and at the same time came troubles with the Oratorian Fathers, of which a word shall be said in a subsequent chapter, which made him feel as though, even with some of his immediate followers, his influence was waning. There is a change of tone in his letters henceforth on certain subjects. They are sadder, more critical, less sanguine. And there is a suspicion of 'extreme' views. The failure of a scheme in which rigid principles had been enforced and acted upon, in defiance of what common sense and experience warranted as practicable, seems to have sunk deep into his mind. He manifested a growing inclination to make common cause with such advocates among Catholics of a cautious and moderate policy as Dupanloup, Montalembert, and Lacordaire. And his trial was increased by the fact that in England the older generation of English Catholics, which, {389} when he had visited St. Edmund's, Prior Park, and Ushaw, had so attracted him by its piety and common sense combined, was dying out, and already being superseded in influence by men whose temper was marked by the less prudent and less English tone which some of his own followers had done much to promote. At St. Edmund's W. G. Ward and Herbert Vaughan were vehemently displacing old traditions, and the same process was at work elsewhere under the influence of Father Faber. The years from 1853 to 1858 are indeed a landmark in Newman's history.

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Notes

1. This title was afterwards transferred to a volume containing the Lectures on the Scope and Nature of University Education, and other Dublin lectures of a later date.
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2. After Newman's retirement in 1859 a deputation of Members of Parliament—Protestant as well as Catholic—among whom were Mr. Maguire, Mr. Deasy, and Mr. Bowyer (afterwards Sir George Bowyer), waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer (at that time Mr. Disraeli) with the request that the University should be given legal power to grant degrees. Nothing came at the time of the request, but it may be remembered that it was Mr. Disraeli himself who in 1879 gave Irish Catholics their first University endowment in connection with the Royal University.
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3. The letters were headed 'Who's to Blame?'
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4. See p. 330.
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5. The following is the first published list of Professors:

1. Dogmatic Theology, the Rev. Father Edmund O'Reilly, D.D., S.J.
2. Holy Scripture, the Very Rev. Patrick Leahy, D.D.
3. Archæology and Irish History, Eugene O'Curry, Esq., M.R.I.A. &c. &c.
4. Political Economy, John O'Hagan, Esq., M.A.
5. Geography, J. B. Robertson, Esq.
6. Classical Literature, Robert Ornsby, Esq., M.A.
7. Ancient History, James Stewart, Esq., M.A.
8. Philosophy of History, Thomas W. Allies, Esq., M.A.
9. Political and Social Science, Aubrey de Vere, Esq.
10. Poetry, D. Florence Macarthy, Esq.
11. The Fine Arts, J. H. Pollen, Esq., M.A.
12. Logic, David Dunne, Esq., D.D.
13. Mathematics, Edward Butler, Esq., M.A.
14. Natural Philosophy, Henry Hennessy, Esq., M.A.
15. Civil Engineering, Terence Flanagan, Esq., M.I.C.E.
16. French Literature, M. Pierre le Page Renouf.
17. Italian Literature, Signor Marani.
18. Practice of Surgery, Andrew Ellis, Esq., F.R.C.S.
19. Anatomy (i.) Thos. Hayden, Esq., F.R.C.S.I.
20. Anatomy (ii.) Robert Cryan, Esq., L.R.C.S.I. and K. and Q.C.P.I.
21. Physiology and Pathology, Robert D. Lyons, Esq., M.B.T.C.D. and L.R.C.S.
22. Demonstrator in Anatomy, Henry Tyrrell, Esq., L.R.C.S.I.
23. Demonstrator in Anatomy, John O'Reilly, Esq., L.R.C.S.I.

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6. Newman wrote thus to Dr. McHale in reply:

'It would be a serious trouble to me to have it brought home to me that I had misconceived the powers which your Grace and the other Irish Prelates have in so flattering a way bestowed on me as Rector of the new University; and, if I have overstepped them in consequence, I beg to offer you my sincere and humble apology ...

'The purchase of the Medical School was one of those measures which I certainly did think came upon me by virtue of my position. I never should have ventured to trouble the Bishops with a matter of business which was nothing else but a part of the work which they have imposed upon me; nor should I have been able to form any clear idea of my duties if I had been told that this was not included in them. Accordingly, I acted on my own responsibility. When, however, the negotiation was brought to a satisfactory issue, the feeling, never absent from me, that I am acting for the Bishops, prompted me on the other hand at once to acquaint you with my success, by way of offering to you an evidence that I was not idling at my post. Writing under these circumstances I wrote without form, and I did not keep a copy of my letter; I cannot, however, but be surprised and deeply pained to find that I have so expressed myself as to admit of the interpretation, foreign to my real meaning, which you have been led to give to my words.

'As to the ad interim appointment of Professors and Lecturers, still more distinctly do I bear in mind that they rest with a power more authoritative than my own ... From the Bishops then I hold whatever powers I possess in the University. They have the appointment of Professors, and they can exercise their veto at their pleasure upon the names I present to them. But I am deliberately of opinion that, if they exercise it in any instance except on definite grounds, sufficient in the judgment of each other, they will be making the commencement of the University an impossible problem to anyone who is not far better fitted for the work than I am. Having many instances of their consideration, I do not fear any such misfortune.'
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7. Dr. Moriarty, it may be mentioned, wrote to Newman on May 1, 1855, strongly dissenting from Dr. Cullen's estimate of the Young Ireland party. 'I do not at all share,' he wrote, 'in Dr. Cullen's distrust of those he calls Young Irelanders. I hope his Grace will live to know them better.'
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8. The brother of Matthew Arnold and father of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
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9. James Robert Hope, afterwards Hope-Scott.
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10. On this point he consulted William Monsell; and to him too he spoke thus early of resignation as inevitable. Monsell, in his answer to Newman, treated Cullen's dilatoriness as simply a deficiency in knowledge of the laws of good manners. But Newman endorses his reply with a note expressing complete dissent.

'I account,' he writes, 'for Dr. Cullen's silence in another way. He had lived too long at Rome not to have known the received rules of courtesy as well as Monsell; but he had begun to treat me as one of his subjects, to whom no such observance of rules was due. I can't help thinking he learnt another rule from Rome,—viz., not to commit himself in writing. Thus one would think that at least the Archbishops could have corresponded with each other on certain questions which I wanted answered, but no, he must always wait "till the Archbishops met." Even then he would not have them answer my questions, but simply passed them over in silence. I was not to act, and for this purpose it was enough for them to be silent. Another thing he had learnt from Rome, was the wisdom of delay; he simply left questions to settle themselves.    J. H. N.'
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11. Idea of a University, p. 233.
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12. The following is the text of the letter and of Newman's reply:

'May 5th, 1857.
'My dear Father Superior,—Our Fathers have requested me to forward to you a Decree passed by them in General Congregation. It is as follows:

'"C. G. May 5, 1857. Whereas by Decree of May 6th, 1852, we gave permission to our Father Superior to accept the office of President of the Catholic University, and whereas the time has long since expired which we contemplated for his absence when we gave him that permission, and whereas we find we cannot continue longer the great inconvenience arising from his protracted separation from us. We hereby unanimously determine, in General Congregation assembled, that his leave of absence shall end, and that, in virtue of obedience to St. Philip, he must return to us."
'Ever, dear Father Superior, &c., &c.,
AMBROSE ST. JOHN,
Dean of the Oratory.'

DR. NEWMAN TO FATHER AMBROSE ST. JOHN

'May 6th, 1857.
'My dear Father Dean,—I have just received your letter, containing the Decree of General Congregation withdrawing my leave of absence from Birmingham.

'I need hardly say I feel bound to obey it. However, I do not interpret it to mean that I must return at this very moment without delay. I assure you I will do so at once, if such is the wish of the Congregation; but it may only mean to fix a limit to my absence.

'It runs thus: "We hereby unanimously determine, &c." I wish to ask of you, as interpreting the intentions of the Congregation, whether I am to return at once; or, if not, within what time.
'J. H. N.'
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13. The text of his letters of resignation is given in the Appendix, p. 629.
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14. Newman, in accepting the Bishops' proposal, adds his own definite conditions, which include the following: that he may appoint his own Vice-Rector to represent him in his absence; that there shall be henceforth a yearly finance audit and a meeting of the Bishops at Dublin each term. These conditions being accepted, he consents to reside nine weeks in the year.

Dr. Leahy replied, conveying the assent of the Archbishops to various arguments submitted by the Rector, but Newman thus endorses his letter:

'It will be observed that a dead silence is kept about my cardinal demands, as stated in my letter to Dr. Leahy—Oct. 16th 1857—of a Vice-Rector who would really represent me, and especially of a finance audit yearly and a terminal Episcopal Dublin Meeting.    J. H. N.'

However, in spite of this provoking absence of explicit assurances Newman continued for another year to be Rector in name (though without a salary), while he resided at the Oratory, and he was allowed to appoint, for the time, a Pro-Vice-Rector.

The text of Dr. Leahy's letter runs as follows:

'October 24th, 1857.
'The Archbishops met in Dublin. Dr. McHale was not present.

'1. The Lodging House for Medical Students, with Dr. Tyrrell for the Head, was approved of ...
'2. The Archbishops also approved of setting up the School of Theology.
'3. The Archbishops also approved of Mr. Arnold and Mr. McCarthy as Professors respectively of English Literature and Architecture.
'4. The appointment of a Vice-Rector is, under present circumstances, of so much importance that they have thought it better to take time in considering it, and have deferred it till after Christmas, leaving it to you meanwhile to name a Pro-Vice-Rector.
'They desired me to request you will name none but a priest.
'5. Your proposed expenditure of 6,000l. per annum ... they wish to defer.'
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15. In the Appendix (p. 628) will be found further correspondence connected with his Rectorship of the University.
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16. Frederick Lucas, the well-known editor of the Tablet.
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Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman
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