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.
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