the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have not
given it more pleasure than has that autobiography in which the
supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his
splendour and his shame. The opinions, the character, the
achievements of the man, matter very little. He may be a sceptic
like the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or a saint like the bitter son
of Monica, but when he tells us his own secrets he can always charm
our ears to listening and our lips to silence. The mode of thought
that Cardinal Newman represented--if that can be called a mode of
thought which seeks to solve intellectual problems by a denial of
the supremacy of the intellect--may not, cannot, I think, survive.
But the world will never weary of watching that troubled soul in
its progress from darkness to darkness. The lonely church at
Littlemore, where 'the breath of the morning is damp, and
worshippers are few,' will always be dear to it, and whenever men
see the yellow snapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they
will think of that gracious undergraduate who saw in the flower's
sure recurrence a prophecy that he would abide for ever with the
Benign Mother of his days--a prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or
her folly, suffered not to be fulfilled. Yes; autobiography is
irresistible. Poor, silly, conceited Mr. Secretary Pepys has
chattered his way into the circle of the Immortals, and, conscious
that indiscretion is the better part of valour, bustles about among
them in that 'shaggy purple gown with gold buttons and looped lace'
which he is so fond of describing to us, perfectly at his ease, and
prattling, to his own and our infinite pleasure, of the Indian blue
petticoat that he bought for his wife, of the 'good hog's hars-
let,' and the 'pleasant French fricassee of veal' that he loved to
eat, of his game of bowls with Will Joyce, and his 'gadding after
beauties,' and his reciting of Hamlet on a Sunday, and his playing