It is impossible to write more strongly and clearly of the wickedness of women's ancestral personal rights being swept away than does Newman in articles published in the fourth volume of his _Miscellanies_. He does not disguise the shameful state of the law as it affects woman to-day, and as it is carried out by Government--that law which makes wrongdoing so easy and unpunishable for man, and so hard and unjust to woman. The unjustifiableness of certain laws was shown up with no uncertain pen by him. He was himself convinced of their iniquity; and once convinced, he stood forward as a modern John the Baptist, spared no one, and passionately accused his countrymen of the injustice, immorality, and cruelty of their making one law for men and another for women. He inveighed against the world's point of view of this subject: and this not once, nor twice, but constantly; and urged with all his might that these wrongs to his countrywomen should be righted. Nevertheless his articles, many of them, are forgotten. The dust of neglect is lying thick upon them on many an unused shelf to-day. His voice has long been silent; and no doubt it has been said of him (as it was by a Church dignitary of Father Dolling at his death): "We shan't be worried any more by _him_ now about the righting of social abuses." Laws against which Newman declaimed are not altered yet, and we are a long way from those far-reaching reforms he advocated. But the words he wrote are not dead. They are in our midst to- day, and they stir depths to-day in the hearts of his countrymen in suggestions towards social reformation; towards the righting of wrongs just as glaring to-day as they were a century ago. Questions which can never be put superficially aside, by men who, like Newman, cannot endure to leave a social wrong unredressed, if they can by any searching find the remedy. CHAPTER XVIII FRANCIS NEWMAN AND HIS RELIGION More than one person has said to me in connection with this memoir: "If the whole of Frank Newman's heterodox religious opinions be not given, the book will lose half its point." To my mind there are quite two, if not more, sides to this question. My strongest argument, however, in favour of only dealing briefly with them is this: It is quite true that Agnosticism more or less held its sway over him during the years between 1834 and 1879. I am quite aware of how tremendous a slice that is of a man's life. But it is not an overwhelming testimony when one comes to look at it not from the worldly point of view. There are periods in which Time--as Time--seems almost beside the mark. "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday." When the Israelites had once achieved their journey through the wilderness--nay, even through the earlier time of tyranny amongst the Egyptians-I suppose the actual years seemed as a dream _when one awaketh_.