"Ah, but that's very short-sighted," said Father Payne. "Newman's was a beautiful spirit--wonderfully tender-hearted, self-restrained, gentle, sensitive, beauty-loving. He loved beauty as much as any man who ever lived--beautiful conduct, beautiful life--and then his gift of expression! There's a marvellous thing. It's pure poetry, most of the _Apologia_: look at the way he flashes into metaphor, at his exquisite pictures of persons, at his irony, his courtesy, his humour, his pathos. He and Ruskin knew exactly how to confide in the world, how to humiliate themselves gracefully in public, how to laugh at themselves, how to be gay--it's all so well-bred, so delicate! Depend upon it, that's the way to make the world love you--to tell it all about yourself like a charming child, without any boasting or bragging. The world is awfully stupid! It adores well-bred egotism. We are all deeply inquisitive about _people_; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love. You can't pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it. You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause. You must just seem to be in need of sympathy and comfort. You must be a little sad, a little tired, a little bewildered. I don't say that is easy to do, and a man must not set out to do it. But if a man has got something childlike and innocent about him, and a naïve way with him, the world will take him to its heart. The world loves to pity, to compassionate, to sympathise, much more than it loves to admire." "But what about the religious side of it all?" I said.