I received an amusing letter from a Catholic Layman recently, in which he said that the Holy See must be regarding with nervous apprehension the series of outspoken Lives which were accumulating round the names of the English Cardinals, Wiseman, Newman, and Manning (bis). Whether the Holy See approves of sincerity or indiscretion or both in the biographies of her favoured sons, she never speaks. She has other things to think of besides books in these days, though needless to say I would submit to the least whisper of her considered judgment, should she think it worth while to lift an eyelash over anything I happened to write.

In the matter of writing the Lives of Cardinals, one cannot be too careful, though so careful are the biographers of Cardinals abroad that their memory as men is forgotten behind a little cloud of fading incense. The tradition of writing frank and human lives of Cardinals must be an English tradition, and let us hope will remain one. Our Cardinals have been and are men of action and men of genius. I think Ward’s Life of Newman is the best Life of a Cardinal in any language, but I think that Cardinal Manning left the finest biographical material. How fine it was perhaps few except myself really know. At any rate Mr. Purcell and myself have both crawled up out of Grubb Street, thanks to piles of that splendid collection, the Manning Papers, and I think that several volumes could yet be written out of what remains.

Perhaps I am the best person to say what a number of friends and critics have hinted lately, that the final and all-comprising Life of Cardinal Manning remains to be written.