The New York herald., 1921-07-31

won the mitre in time to take leading
part in the Vatican Council and his red
hat in time to share in the Conclave
which elected Leo XIII. In many
ways he was a link with the past and
a prophet of the future. He was a
cricketer before round arm bowling,
Free Trader before Golden, a Home
Ruler before Gladstone, an Imperialist
before Chamberlain and Christian
Democrat before Leo XIII. He also
seems to have preceded his fellow
countrymen by a generation in their
antipathy to Prussia. He himself had
once desired a political life, though
there is no ground for Mr.. Paul's
statement in his History of Modern
England that he was originally des-
tined to a mercantile career"
This summary of Cardinal Man
ning's life is quoted from Shane Les
lies new life of Cardinal Manning for
the reason that in his desire to make
the work authoritative Mr. Leslie has
''documented" his biography so ex-
tensively there is comparatively little
of him and much of the epistolary
records of Manning and all the great
Victorian, Roman and American fig-
ures of the Cardinals lifetime This
biography has been written ito meet
the aspersions which have been al
lowed to gather round the name OF
Cardinal Manning since the publica-
ton of Purcell's Life" an aim that
has been accomplished h measure
running over. Incidentally, it is
most effective antidote to the mere
tricious study of Manning presented
by Lytton Strachey in his Eminent
Victorians" Mr.. Leslie has been so
conscientious in his efforts to correct
the false impressions created by Pur-
cells biography that he has sunk his
own characteristic brilliant witty Irish
style into soberness of treatment be-
fitting the dual intention of this record
of the great English churchman's life.
round whose head controversy ranged
for most of his "a years.
Manning's life before his CONVEX
sion to the Catholic faith. in 1851. is
sketched in seven brief chapters. One
tale comes out of his boyhood of
robbing the winery at his fathers
country house with the two sons of
the vicar of Sundridge, both of whom.
as did Manning, afterward became
Bishops. This is probably the only
case on record where three future
Bishops were guilty of larceny" re-
Elected the Cardinal. "Were we pun
ished? No. we were discreet We gave
ourselves up and were forgiven" For
most of his life he kept metaphors
from cricket in his speech. He used
to say he became a Catholic off his
own bat" and In his last years, I'VE
have had a long inning, Newman and
l." But che disliked the ideal of mus
cular Christianity and Of a heaven
where cherubs played curates at
cricket indefinitely. To athletic priests
he said: How, would you like to ap-
pear In the next world with a cricket
bat in one hand and a chalice in the
other?'" He had other graces OF ex-
preston, however. In some verbal
vignettes" made on his way to Rome
in 1s47 he noted, "In a garden by the
sea little girl Of 8 dancing to the
chime all alone" and again: Above
Genoa the blue loom Of the snow
mountains, and below the rose colour,
then the silver of the moon chatting
upon the waters" In Ravenna he OBJ
served "a monk not bowling at the
Gloria. a preacher making too much
of his composition, a virgin careful
about her food on Fridays"
From the day he entered the Cath
olic Church Manning's life was one
long fight for the things--religious,
political, social--that he considered
right as an Englishman and church.
man. One of the great merits of this
biography is that Mr.. Leslie has
treated each one of the important
Manning controversies in elaborate
detail and with what may be called re-
lentless Recommendation. His friendship
with Florence Nightingale Gf 1t was
the Cardinal who first suggested her
nursing career), his work at the Vail
can Council, the dificultieA with the