From a miniature after an oil painting at Oscott by CARDINAL WISEMAN. Atatis 61 From a photograph taken at the Congress of Malines. Frontispicce To face p. 254 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CARDINAL WISEMAN CHAPTER XIX THE SEQUEL TO WISEMAN'S APPEAL THE effect of Wiseman's Appeal was immediate in visibly modifying, among the more reasonable minds, the violent agitation which the preceding month had witnessed. It is so temperate and logical,' wrote a popular journal,'' as to increase public regret that it did not appear a month ago, before the mischief was done, and before this angry flood of theological bitterness was let loose over the land. We wish we could indulge the hope that it will be effective for the purpose for which it appears to have been framed, and shall greatly rejoice if at the eleventh hour it should tend in any degree, however slight, to abate the public mistrust of any class of our fellow-subjects. Whatever distrust may remain will be entirely chargeable upon the blatant indiscretion of the many oversanguine priests of the Roman persuasion, who have 1 London News, November 23. VOL. II. B tortured what, if we are to believe Cardinal Wiseman, was a harmless domestic arrangement among the Roman Catholics themselves, into an aggression.' The ability of the Appeal appears to have struck many who had spoken of Wiseman with the utter contempt with which Exeter Hall regarded the abstract embodiment of Popery. There can be no doubt at all,' said the 'Spectator,' of his controversial power. Whether confuting the Premier on grounds of political precedent, meeting ecclesiastical opponents by appeals to principles of spiritual freedom, rebuking a partisan judge, or throwing sarcasm at the indiffusive wealth' of a sacred establishment which has become literally hedged from the world by barriers of social depravity, he equally shows his mastery of dialectical resource.' 'The most astute and the most polite reasoner of his time,' was the verdict of another organ of public opinion. The Cardinal has astonished the natives,' we read in another. Our anti-Papacy zealots hardly knew that Dr. Wiseman had left the Flaminian Gate when lo, he appears, and issues a Manifesto in which he certainly deals slashing blows among his assailants right and left, even if he does not succeed in parrying all those that have been aimed at his own party. We have seldom read an abler specimen of controversial writing than this document.' And similar was the tone adopted by nearly the whole press. There were, however, still a minority who contented themselves with simply reiterating their attacks. 'We have our own way,' we read in one of these Atlas, November 23. 2 Weekly News, November 23. papers, of viewing and stating this great national question, and we shall not cast it away for the Cardinal's. We believe that this venturesome prelate is born to work out the fact that Popery of the Ultramontane school is utterly incompatible with the progress of civilisation in Europe, or the existence of good civil government anywhere.' Important as showing the change of public opinion, though marking also the limits of that change, were the comments of the leader of the original attackthe Times'—which ran as follows: We have now before us, in the 'Appeal' of Dr. Wiseman, which appeared in our columns yesterday, and in the pamphlet of Mr. Bowyer, so frequently referred to in the 'Appeal,' all that can be said, or at least all that it is deemed prudent to say, in defence, or rather in palliation, of the recent attack upon the Established Church of England and the feelings and principles of her people. The question thus raised is well worthy of our most attentive consideration. If we have pronounced an opinion against the Pope and the Cardinal unheard, it has not been from any wish to deny them fair play, but because they did not condescend to give us any more tangible explanation of their acts than was to be gathered from empty gasconades and pompous manifestoes, the very sweepings of a literary wardrobe now nearly worn out, and never very tastefully selected. We congratulate Dr. Wiseman on his recovery of the use of the English language. If the popular demonstrations with which the arrival of the new Cardinal, who has come with a commission from Rome to govern half a dozen of the dioceses of our Church, and some two of the kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy, have not been all that was agreeable in other respects, they have, at any rate, as the Scotch say, brought him to his English. We hear no more in the Appeal' of the planetary system either of Cullen or Copernicus; suns, planets, and comets dance no more in the mazes of metaphorical confusion. England is suffered to remain where she is, and is no longer forced, to the 1 Morning Post, November 21. |