In spite of having taken a most unpopular step in leaving the national church, Newman always retained the popularity which he had so well earned as a member of that Church. I have myself been one of his true admirers, partly from having known many of his intimate friends at Oxford, partly from having studied his earlier works when I first came to England. I read them more for their style than for their contents. If Newman had left behind him no more than his exquisite University sermons and his sweet hymns he would always have stood high among the glories of England. But Kingsley also was loved by the people and surrounded by numerous and powerful friends. It must be due to my ignorance of the national character, but I have certainly never been able to explain why public sympathy went so entirely with Newman and against Kingsley; why Kingsley was supposed to have acted unchivalrously and Newman was looked upon as a martyr to his convictions, and as the victim of an illiberal and narrow-minded Anglican clique. Certain it is that in the opinion of the majority Kingsley had failed, and failed ignominiously, while Newman’s popularity revived and became greater than ever. Kingsley felt his defeat most deeply; he was like a man that stammered, and could not utter at the right time the right word that was in his mind. What is still more surprising was the sudden collapse of the sale of Kingsley’s most popular books. I saw him after he had been with his publishers to make arrangements for the sale of his copyrights. He wanted the money to start his sons, and he had a right to expect a substantial sum. The sum offered him seemed almost an insult, and yet he assured me that he had seen the books of his publishers, and that the sale of his books during the last years did not justify a larger offer. He was miserable about it, as well he might be. He felt not only the pecuniary loss, but, as he imagined, the loss of that influence which he had gained by years of hard labour. However, he was mistaken in his idea that he had laboured in vain. Immediately after his death there came the most extraordinary reaction. His books sold again in hundreds of thousands, and his family received in one year a great deal more from his royalties than had been offered him for the whole copyright of all his books. People are more willing now to admit that though Newman may have been right in his “Apologia pro Vita Sua,” Kingsley was not wrong in pointing out the weak points in Newman’s character and in the moral and political doctrines of the Roman Catholic system, more particularly of the Jesuits, and the dangers that threatened his beloved England from those who seemed halting between the two Churches, the one national, the other foreign, the one reformed, the other unreformed.