' At the age of four the child was
told by a cousin of the age of six that 'God had a book in which
He wrote down everything we did wrong. This so terrified me for
days that I remember being found by my mother sitting under a
kind of writing-table in great fear. I never forgot this at any
time in my life,' the Cardinal tells us, 'and it has been a great
grace to me.' When he was nine years old he 'devoured the
Apocalypse; and I never all through my life forgot the "lake that
burneth with fire and brimstone". That verse has kept me like an
audible voice through all my life, and through worlds of danger
in my youth.'
At Harrow the worlds of danger were already around him; but yet
he listened to the audible voice. 'At school and college I never
failed to say my prayers, so far as memory serves me, even for a
day.' And he underwent another religious experience: he read
Paley's Evidences. 'I took in the whole argument,' wrote Manning,
when he was over seventy, 'and I thank God that nothing has ever
shaken it.' Yet on the whole he led the unspiritual life of an
ordinary schoolboy. We have glimpses of him as a handsome lad,
playing cricket, or strutting about in tasselled Hessian top-
boots. And on one occasion at least he gave proof of a certain
dexterity of conduct which deserved to be remembered. He went out
of bounds, and a master, riding by and seeing him on the other
side of a field, tied his horse to a gate, and ran after him.
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