Mrs. Temperley Grey tells me that it was always Newman's first wife's great hope that her husband should be the means, through his ministrations during the last part of Newman's life, of leading him back to his original faith. Mrs. Newman used deeply to regret Newman's lack of definite belief, but always said when the subject was raised, "Cannot they understand that my husband is under a cloud--a mist, as it were?" Both the brothers, the Cardinal and Francis Newman, through the greater part of their lives had been restlessly searching for truth--for certainty--in their faith. Calvinism had been the black cloud under which they had both been brought up. If the _obiter dictum_ of a celebrated Cardinal in the Roman Church be correct: "Give _me_ the child till he is seven years old, and he will be a Jesuit all his life," then indeed it shows the tremendous power of habit, for it was only through much tribulation, through passionate inward wrestlings with those terrible tenets, and through many searchings of heart, that either brother made his way out of its toils at length. The Cardinal sought above all things Truth, through authority; no one will forget those soul-stirring words of his in his _Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ_ in which he speaks of the great peace that at last quieted his doubts and fears when he was received into the Roman Church. To many of us Authority _is_ the life-buoy which supports us "o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone"; but Francis Newman could not believe in it. "Authority is the bane," he would say, "of religion." He must see with his intellectual eyes, to be saved. He must see and touch Truth for himself; his intellectual self must be convinced, or he must stand outside the creeds he knew--a questioner still. But he was honest and open in his aloofness. Did it mean loss of a distinguished brilliant worldly career (as it did at Oxford in 1830)? Well, then the career _must_ be lost, for he could not bring himself to sign to doctrines which he did not believe. Did it mean unpopularity, that he held certain views on Social Reform? Well, rather than compromise, rather than temporize, he _would_ stand out alone rather than yield an iota of what he held to be the true Progressive Aims for People and Land. Only--and this was a flaw, and no small one either--he often wrote his religious opinions so openly as to pain his readers. In many of his letters which I have read there are expressions relating to the religious dogmas held by his correspondents which are bluntly, unrestrainedly, bitterly used. It is true that often, at the close of a letter, there follows a hope that he had not hurt his friends' feelings; but that he must, at all costs, be open as to his own beliefs. But that apology only came as an after-thought, as it were as an attempt to dress the wound which he himself had made, and is quite unable to do away with the impression produced by the written word. _Litera scripta manet_.