He keeps up correspondence by letter with some of his old friends at college, and with one or two of the Tractarians, Mr. Palmer, the author of the "Church of Christ," among the number. An old friend of his writes to him from among the Irvingites, and Father Spencer writes to another in these terms:--"The supposed miraculous voice, to which that party (the Irvingites) attend, has named 12 men as Apostles, who expect shortly to be endued with miraculous powers to enable them to restore the Church in its perfect beauty. Drummond the banker is one. Spencer Percival, and my great friend Henry Bridgman, Lord Bradford's brother, others." It is not a little strange that this Mr. Bridgman comes into the journal of Father Ignatius's Cambridge life very frequently, and mostly in the character of a Mentor. Father Ignatius never gained much from correspondence, sought on his part, with leading men in the great religious movements of the period. But whenever others sought his advice, they generally became Catholics. They were disposed for truth, and he could remove objections, tell them of books, and pray for them. He broke off this kind of unasked-for correspondence at this time, but he resumed it again on a different footing, as shall be related in its place. He had another means of doing good now, which could not come into his line while simple pastor of a country district. The college of Oscott was a place worth seeing, if not as a specimen of architecture, at least as being the stronghold of Catholicism, and the centre of a great deal of {268} intellectual and moral training. Many of his great friends, who could not hitherto devise any plausible plea for visiting him in his retirement, could find one immediately now, from the place he dwelt in as well as the position he there held. His name was also noised abroad, and persons would feel some curiosity for the acquaintance of one who was moving heaven and earth for their conversion. Accordingly, we find that he entertains his two brothers, the then earl and his successor, on one day; Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Gladstone on another day, and so forth. Thus, that particular power he possessed in his conversation had a field upon which it could be brought into requisition, in a manner which former arrangements had debarred to him.