reaching across the world, laid hold on Arnold's son, when Arnold
himself was no longer there to fight it. A general reaction against the
negations and philosophies of his youth set in for "Philip," as
inevitable in his case as the revolt against St. Sulpice was for Ernest
Renan. For my father was in truth born for religion, as his whole later
life showed. In that he was the true son of Arnold of Rugby. But his
speculative Liberalism had carried him so much farther than his father's
had ever gone, that the recoil was correspondingly great. The steps of
it are dim. He was "struck" one Sunday with the "authoritative" tone of
the First Epistle of Peter. Who and what was Peter? What justified such
a tone? At another time he found a _Life of St. Brigit of Sweden_ at a
country inn, when he was on one of his school-inspecting journeys across
the island. And he records a mysterious influence or "voice" from it, as
he rode in meditative solitude through the sunny spaces of the Tasmanian
bush. Last of all, he "obtained"--from England, no doubt--the _Tracts
for the Times_. And as he went through them, the same documents, and the
same arguments, which had taken Newman to Rome, nine years before,
worked upon his late and distant disciple. But who can explain
"conversion"? Is it not enough to say, as was said of old, "The Holy
Ghost fell on them that believed"? The great "Malignant" had indeed
triumphed. In October, 1854, my father was received at Hobart, Tasmania,
into the Church of Rome; and two years later, after he had reached
England, and written to Newman asking the new Father of the Oratory to
receive him, Newman replied:

How strange it seems! What a world this is! I knew your father a
little, and I really think I never had any unkind feeling toward him.
I saw him at Oriel on the Purification before (I think) his death
(January, 1842). I was glad to meet him. If I said ever a harsh
thing against him I am very sorry for it. In seeing you, I should