It was through Mr. Purnell that he communicated the papers here reprinted to the Reasoner. Although but of the character of fragments, they bespeak an original mind. The secret of the Cardinal's great influence and strength was that what he spoke and wrote came not from books, but forthright out of his own head and heart. The topics with which his brother deals were those only needing the mind, and his treatment shows they were viewed in the dry light of an original intellect. The Reasoner ceased soon after the appearance of these papers, and thus closed the one opening for his literary activity. Francis William Newman was, at least till the present year, unaware that his arguments for Theism were challenged by his own brother under the signature of "A Recluse." He informs me that he had never heard that anyone would publish anything from his pen, and that he heard that at his death, in March, 1884, he left a box full of manuscripts, which were destroyed as useless. Whether this was done by order of his relatives, whether the landlady decided the question, or whether the vicar or neighbors were called in, will perhaps remain as unknown as the worth of the manuscripts. The following specimens are all by which the latter question can be judged. Mr. Meynell says that two years before he died he had a short visit from his eldest brother. It must have been a strange meeting, and one worthy the brush of a great artist. Surely in all England there were not two men of eighty whose thoughts were so divergent or two brothers whose lives were so diversified. The one a saintly cardinal, called by the Pope the Light of England, who, by his rare urbanity, had gained the respect of all, replete with all that should accompany old age--as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends: the other, fallen, too, into the sere and yellow leaf, and without them all--poor, solitary, unknown and despised, a scorn and wonderment to his nearest neighbors. And all from following his own thought that had made him a purus putus Atheist. J. M. Wheeler. CHARACTER OF CHARLES NEWMAN.