Cardinal Wiseman was now obviously declining towards the grave. A
man of vast physique--'your immense', an Irish servant used
respectfully to call him--of sanguine temperament, of genial
disposition, of versatile capacity, he seemed to have engrafted
upon the robustness of his English nature the facile, child-like,
and expansive qualities of the South. So far from being a Bishop
Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact, the very
antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had
innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England
to the See of Peter, and eventually had come to believe that, in
God's hand, he was the instrument destined to bring about this
miraculous consummation. Was not the Oxford Movement, with its
flood of converts, a clear sign of the Divine will? Had he not
himself been the author of that momentous article on St.
Augustine and the Donatists, which had finally convinced Newman
that the Church of England was in schism? And then, had he not
been able to set afoot a Crusade of Prayer throughout Catholic
Europe for the conversion of England?

He awaited the result with eager expectation, and in the meantime
he set himself to smooth away the hostility of his countrymen by
delivering courses of popular lectures on literature and
archaeology. He devoted much time and attention to the ceremonial
details of his princely office. His knowledge of rubric and
ritual, and of the symbolical significations of vestments, has
rarely been equalled, and he took a profound delight in the
ordering and the performance of elaborate processions. During one
of these functions, an unexpected difficulty arose: the Master of
Ceremonies suddenly gave the word for a halt, and, on being asked
the reason, replied that he had been instructed that moment by