scrape together money, to write articles for the students'
Gazette, to make plans for medical laboratories, to be
ingratiating with the City Council; he was obliged to spend
months travelling through the remote regions of Ireland in the
company of extraordinary ecclesiastics and barbarous squireens.
He was a thoroughbred harnessed to a four-wheeled cab--and he
knew it. Eventually, he realised something else: he saw that the
whole project of a Catholic University had been evolved as a
political and ecclesiastical weapon against the Queen's Colleges
of Peel, and that was all. As an instrument of education. it was
simply laughed at; and he himself had been called in because his
name would be a valuable asset in a party game. When he
understood that, he resigned his rectorship and returned to the
Oratory.

But, his tribulations were not yet over. It seemed to be God's
will that he should take part in a whole succession of schemes,
which, no less than the project of the Irish University, were to
end in disillusionment and failure. He was persuaded by Cardinal
Wiseman to undertake the editorship of a new English version of
the Scriptures, which was to be a monument of Catholic
scholarship and an everlasting glory to Mother Church. He made
elaborate preparations; he collected subscriptions, engaged
contributors, and composed a long and learned prolegomena to the
work. It was all useless; Cardinal Wiseman began to think of
other things; and the scheme faded imperceptibly into thin air.
Then a new task was suggested to him: "The Rambler", a Catholic
periodical, had fallen on evil days; would Dr Newman come to the
rescue, and accept the editorship? This time he hesitated rather
longer than usual; he had burned his fingers so often-- he must