[TO TRIC EDITOR OF TER " SPEOTA.T011.1
think many will thank you for your comments on Dr. Abbott's assault, as it practically is, on the memory of Cardinal Newman. Not a few, for more reasons than one, will regret that Dr. Abbott did not assault Newman while he was alive, instead of after his death. We should have seen, I think, a grand repetition of the flaying of an assailant, as we saw it when Kingsley attacked. But, alas ! the Lion is dead !
I should not, however, have written simply to express vain regrets, and thanks, had I not also wished to add this contribution towards explaining, if it wanted explaining, New- man's long delay before leaving the English Church. Just before he seceded, he called on a lady, a great friend, who told. me the incident. He sat down, and after a few words, covered his face with his hands, and bursting into tears, said : —" If I know myself, and if it were God's will that I should bear in my own person the suffering that I shall cause others by the step I am going to take, I would gladly do so. Yet I must take it."
Surely his extreme sensitiveness for others, combined with his over self-conscious searching of motives, sufficiently explains. his hesitation, without recourse to the preposterous notion of
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