burneth with fire and brimstone". That verse has kept me like an
audible voice through all my life, and through worlds of danger
in my youth.'

At Harrow the worlds of danger were already around him; but yet
he listened to the audible voice. 'At school and college I never
failed to say my prayers, so far as memory serves me, even for a
day.' And he underwent another religious experience: he read
Paley's Evidences. 'I took in the whole argument,' wrote Manning,
when he was over seventy, 'and I thank God that nothing has ever
shaken it.' Yet on the whole he led the unspiritual life of an
ordinary schoolboy. We have glimpses of him as a handsome lad,
playing cricket, or strutting about in tasselled Hessian top-
boots. And on one occasion at least he gave proof of a certain
dexterity of conduct which deserved to be remembered. He went out
of bounds, and a master, riding by and seeing him on the other
side of a field, tied his horse to a gate, and ran after him. The
astute youth outran the master, fetched a circle, reached the
gate, jumped on to the horse's back and rode off. For this he was
very properly chastised; but, of what use was chastisement? No
whipping, however severe, could have eradicated from little
Henry's mind a quality at least as firmly planted in it as his
fear of Hell and his belief in the arguments of Paley.

It had been his father's wish that Manning should go into the
Church; but the thought disgusted him; and when he reached
Oxford, his tastes, his ambitions, his successes at the Union,
all seemed to mark him out for a political career. He was a year
junior to Samuel Wilberforce, and a year senior to Gladstone. In
those days the Union was the recruiting-ground for young