266 EARLY REMINISCENCES a composition, laboriously attained, in which was not a line of truth. He sought, by practice, to acquire the ideal ecclesiastical saintly pattern. Look at his likeness when he was an Anglican ; there may be seen the man as he was, clever and pious—sweet it never was, self-consciousness checked anything like sympathy. However, it was a good face. Look at it after a few years' massage in the Latin School, and it is no longer what it had been. It has ceased to be real, it has become a mask. It has become motionless, save when the Cardinal lets himself go upon the English Church; then only does the rancour of his heart reveal itself, bred of disappointment. On the other hand, the rugged face of Newman is full of humanity, tenderness and sympathy. It is no mask, it is a real countenance through which the beautiful soul gleams. Manning strained all his powers to obtain the conversion of Florence Nightingale. She would not only prove a feather in his cap, but he felt sure that if she were caught she would bring a whole train of Anglican nurses and Sisters-of-Mercy after her. As in the German story, the boy who had the golden goose captured was followed by parson, lawyer, girls galore, and adhesive old maids. But he failed. Miss Nightingale was not to be caught by his arguments or eloquence, neither by fawning nor by threats. She saw how worthless were his arguments, and she mistrusted the man himself. She wrote to the nuns of Bermondsey: " The fact is, as the Catholics themselves call him, he is a deucedly clever fellow, and somehow or other, by foul rather than by fair means, gets all things his own way." His worst enemy could hardly speak of him more unfavourably. As I have just said, Manning's expression, whether in the pulpit or in private, changed the moment he began to speak of the English Church. The fact was that it had become obvious to him that the main obstruction to success in England was the presence of the Anglican Church, and especially of the Catholic party in her. He made no account of the Protestant assailants : they were ignorant men, who could bark but not bite, and whose vociferations actually drove those who heard them, like those of Thessalonica, to search whether things were so as declared by those pastors. Being undiscriminating men, they were easily induced to believe
