the public mind and to its dislikings? Anyhow, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. If I am natural, he will tell them, "Ars est celare artem;" if I am convincing, he will suggest that I am an able logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent; if I am calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be true. The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will be my defeat.

So will it be if Mr. Kingsley succeeds in his manœuvre; but I do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my readers may eventually form of me from these pages, I am confident that they will believe me in what I shall say in the course of them. I have no misgiving it all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh with a man who has been so long before the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak of him from personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which told against himself; who has never given his name or authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony which he did not think at least plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for others more than for himself; who has given up much that he loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved honesty better than name, and truth better than dear friends.

And now I am in a train of thought higher and more serene than any which slanders can disturb. Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into space. Your name shall occur again as little as I can help, in the course of these pages. I shall henceforth occupy myself not with you, but with your charges.

What shall be the special imputation, against which I shall throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which my accuser directs upon me? I mean to confine myself to one, for there is only one about which I much care—the charge of untruthfulness. He may cast upon me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they may stick on me, as long as they can, in the course of nature. They will fall to the ground in their season.

And indeed I think the same of the charge of untruthfulness, and I select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable, but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not stain. I think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According to the old saying, Prævalebit Veritas. There are virtues indeed, which the world is not fitted to judge about or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity: but it can judge about truthfulness; it can judge about the natural virtues, and truthfulness is one of them. Natural virtues may also become supernatural; truthfulness is such; but that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of mankind at large. It may be more difficult in this or that particular case for men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the Court of Queen's Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly which took place in Hindoostan; but that is a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind has the right to judge of truthfulness in the case of a Catholic, as in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I have never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour, my avenger will appear, and the world will acquit me of untruthfulness, even though it be not while I live.

Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I think, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable and unjust in their seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman (as in fact I am) than belong to any other race under heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty and burly; and their repentance for their injustice is greater than their sin.

For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I am at least as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can be, who are only the judges. I have not set myself to remove it, first, because I never have had an opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I pronounce him to be himself again? If I may judge from the tone of the public press, which represents the public voice, I have great reason to take heart at this time. I have been treated by contemporary critics in this controversy with great fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them for it. However, the decision of the time and mode of my defence has been taken out of my hands; and I am thankful that it has been so. I am bound now as a duty to myself, to the Catholic cause, to the Catholic priesthood, to give account of myself without any delay, when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged with untruthfulness. I accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be content when I have done so.

I confine myself then, in these pages, to the charge of untruthfulness; and I hereby cart away, as so much rubbish, the impertinences, with which the pamphlet of Accusation swarms. I shall not think it necessary here to examine, whether I am "worked into a pitch of confusion," or have "carried self-deception to perfection," or am "anxious to show my credulity," or am "in a morbid state of mind," or "hunger for nonsense as my food," or "indulge in subtle paradoxes" and "rhetorical exaggerations," or have "eccentricities" or teach in a style "utterly beyond" my accuser's "comprehension," or create in him "blank astonishment," or "exalt the magical powers of my Church," or have "unconsciously committed myself to a statement which strikes at the root of all morality," or "look down on the Protestant gentry as without hope of heaven," or "had better be sent to the furthest" Catholic "mission among the savages of the South seas," than "to teach in an Irish Catholic University," or have "gambled away my reason," or adopt "sophistries," or have published "sophisms piled upon sophisms," or have in my sermons "culminating wonders," or have a "seemingly sceptical method," or have "barristerial ability" and "almost boundless silliness," or "make great mistakes," or am "a subtle dialectician," or perhaps have "lost my temper," or "misquote Scripture," or am "antiscriptural," or "border very closely on the Pelagian heresy."—Pp. 5, 7, 26, 29–34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 48.

These all are impertinences; and the list is so long that I am almost sorry to have given them room which might be better used. However, there they are, or at least a portion of them; and having noticed them thus much, I shall notice them no more.

Coming then to the subject, which is to furnish the staple of my publication, the question of my truthfulness, I first direct attention to the passage which the Act of Accusation contains at p. 8 and p. 42. I shall give my reason presently, why I begin with it.

My accuser is speaking of my sermon on Wisdom and Innocence, and he says, "It must be remembered always that it is not a Protestant, but a Romish sermon."—P. 8.

Then at p. 42 he continues, "Dr. Newman does not apply to it that epithet. He called it in his letter to me of the 7th of January (published by him) a 'Protestant' one. I remarked that, but considered it a mere slip of the pen. Besides, I have now nothing to say to that letter.