Of the twenty years' schooling by which he prepared himself for his work in England, the cardinal has left us some admirable sketches, scattered through his books. Dr. Manning alluded briefly to the influence of his Roman education. We propose to gather up what the cardinal himself has said about it; to paint with his own pencil a picture of his life of preparation; leaving other hands, if they will, to paint his subsequent life of labor. Nicholas Wiseman was born at Seville, in Spain, on the second of August, 1802. His father was an English merchant, his mother an Irish lady. He lost his father in infancy, and at the age of six, in consequence of those wars of invasion which for a time made Spain no longer habitable, was taken to Ireland to be educated. After spending one or two years at a boarding-school near Waterford, his mother went with him to England, and {118} placed him at St. Cuthbert's college, Ushaw, near Durham. Dr. Lingard was then vice-president of the college, "and I have retained upon my memory," wrote the cardinal, nearly fifty years afterward, "the vivid recollection of specific acts of thoughtful and delicate kindness, which showed a tender heart, mindful of its duties amidst the many harassing occupations just devolved on him through the death of the president and his own literary engagements; for he was reconducting his first great work through the press. But though he went from college soon after, and I later left the country, and saw him not again for fifteen years, yet there grew up an indirect understanding first, and by degrees a correspondence and an intimacy which continued to the close of his life." [Footnote 38] [Footnote 38: _Recollections of the Last Four Popes_. Leo XII. Chap. vii.]