for affairs was recognised not only in the Church, but in the
world at large, and he busied himself with matters of such varied
scope as National Education, the administration of the Poor Law,
and the Employment of Women. Mr. Gladstone kept up an intimate
correspondence with him on these and on other subjects, mingling
in his letters the details of practical statesmanship with the
speculations of a religious thinker. 'Sir James Graham,' he
wrote, in a discussion of the bastardy clauses of the Poor Law,
'is much pleased with the tone of your two communications. He is
disposed, without putting an end to the application of the
workhouse test against the mother, to make the remedy against the
putative father "real and effective" for expenses incurred in the
workhouse. I am not enough acquainted to know whether it would be
advisable to go further. You have not proposed it; and I am
disposed to believe that only with a revived and improved
discipline in the Church can we hope for any generally effective
check upon lawless lust.' 'I agree with you EMINENTLY,' he
writes, in a later letter, 'in your doctrine of FILTRATION. But
it sometimes occurs to me, though the question may seem a strange
one, how far was the Reformation, but especially the Continental
Reformation, designed by God, in the region of final causes, for
that purification of the Roman Church which it has actually
realised?'

In his archdeaconry, Manning lived to the full the active life of
a country clergyman. His slim, athletic figure was seen
everywhere in the streets of Chichester, or on the lawns of the
neighbouring rectories, or galloping over the downs in breeches
and gaiters, or cutting brilliant figures on the ice. He was an
excellent judge of horse-flesh, and the pair of greys which drew