above three or four persons know. We have 480 promises. Is it then
hopeless? ... I don't think our enemies would beat 600; at least, it would
be no triumph....

The Bishop of Exeter has for these eight years, ever since the commencement
of the Ecclesiastical Commission, been biding his time, and the Duke of
Wellington last spring disgusted him much. This both makes it likely that
he will now move, and also diminishes the force of the very words you
quote, for peradventure they are ordinary with him. I have good hopes that
he will.

Ever yours,

John H. Newman.

The experiment of offering to minds which had lost all sympathy with
Protestantism, yet were unable to close with Rome, an imitation of the
monastic life by way of shelter from the rude checks which their
aspirations sustained in the world without, seems to have answered for a
time, and possibly retarded for about three years that rush of conversion
which made 1845 such an epoch in the history even of the Church. This may
be inferred from the next letter, written shortly after Mr. Newman and his
disciples were regularly settled at Littlemore. I am not aware what the
report was which he so emphatically denies.

_The Rev. J. H. Newman to J. R. Hope, Esq._

April 22, 1842. _Dabam e Domo S. M. V. apud Littlemore._

My dear Hope,--Does not this portentous date promise to outweigh any