'If indeed,' he wrote to Lady Herbert, 'it were the will of our
Divine Lord to lay upon me this heavy burden, He could have done
it in no way more strengthening and consoling to me. To receive
it from the hands of His Vicar, and from Pius IX, and after long
invocation of the Holy Ghost, and not only without human
influences, but in spite of manifold aria powerful human
opposition, gives me the last strength for such a cross.'


VI

MANNING'S appointment filled his opponents with alarm. Wrath and
vengeance seemed to be hanging over them; what might not be
expected from the formidable enemy against whom they had
struggled for so long, and who now stood among them armed with
archiepiscopal powers and invested with the special confidence of
Rome? Great was their amazement, great was their relief, when
they found that their dreaded master breathed nothing but
kindness, gentleness, and conciliation. The old scores, they
found, were not to be paid off, but to be wiped out. The new
archbishop poured forth upon every side all the tact, all the
courtesy, all the dignified graces of a Christian magnanimity. It
was impossible to withstand such treatment. Bishops who had spent
years in thwarting him became his devoted adherents; even the
Chapter of Westminster forgot its hatred. Monsignor Talbot was
extremely surprised. 'Your greatest enemies have entirely come
round,' he wrote. 'I received the other day a panegyric of you
from Searle. This change of feeling I cannot attribute to
anything but the Holy Ghost.' Monsignor Talbot was very fond of