Page:Eminent Victorians.djvu/80

life to the reunion of England to the See of Peter, and eventually had come to believe that, in God's hand, he was the instrument destined to bring about this miraculous consummation. Was not the Oxford Movement, with its flood of converts, a clear sigh of the Divine will? Had he not himself been the author of that momentous article on St. Augustine and the Donatists, which had finally convinced Newman that the Church of England was in schism? And then had he not been able to set on foot a Crusade of Prayer throughout Catholic Europe for the conversion of England? He awaited the result with eager expectation, and in the meantime he set himself to smooth away the hostility of his countrymen by delivering courses of popular lectures on literature and archaeology. He devoted much time and attention to the ceremonial details of his princely office. His knowledge of rubric and ritual and of the symbolical significations of vestments has rarely been equalled, and he took a profound delight in the ordering and the performance of elaborate processions. During one of these functions an unexpected difficulty arose: the Master of the Ceremonies suddenly gave the word for a halt, and, on being asked the reason, replied that he had been instructed that moment by special revelation to stop the procession. The Cardinal, however, was not at a loss. "You may let the procession go on," he smilingly replied. "I have just obtained permission, by special revelation, to proceed with it." His leisure hours he spent in the writing of edifying novels, the composition of acrostics in Latin Verse, and in playing battledore and shuttlecock with his little nieces. There was, indeed, only one point in which he resembled Bishop Blougram—his love of a good table. Some of Newman's disciples were astonished and grieved to find that he sat down to four courses of fish during Lent. "I am sorry to say," remarked one of them afterwards, "that there is a lobster salad side to the Cardinal."