activities of a bishopric. But the two together could not be
quieted so easily. The Church of England is a commodious
institution; she is very anxious to please, but somehow or other,
she has never managed to supply a happy home to superstitious
egotists. 'What an escape for my poor soul!' Manning is said to
have exclaimed when, shortly after his conversion, a mitre was
going a-begging. But, in truth, Manning's 'poor soul' had scented
nobler quarry. To one of his temperament, how was it possible,
when once the choice was plainly put, to hesitate for a moment
between the respectable dignity of an English bishop, harnessed
by the secular power, with the Gorham judgment as a bit between
his teeth, and the illimitable pretensions of the humblest priest
of Rome?

For the moment, however, it seemed as if the Fates had at last
been successful in their little game of shunting Manning. The
splendid career which he had so laboriously built up from the
small beginnings of his Sussex curacy was shattered--and
shattered by the inevitable operation of his own essential needs.
He was over forty, and he had been put back once more to the very
bottom rung of the ladder--a middle-aged neophyte with, so far as
could be seen, no special claim to the attention of his new
superiors. The example of Newman, a far more illustrious convert,
was hardly reassuring: he had been relegated to a complete
obscurity, in which he was to remain until extreme old age. Why
should there be anything better in store for Manning? Yet it so
happened that within fourteen years of his conversion Manning was
Archbishop of Westminster and the supreme ruler of the Roman
Catholic community in England. This time the Fates gave up the
unequal struggle; they paid over their stakes in despair, and