There was, indeed, only one point in which he
resembled Bishop Blougram--his love of a good table. Some of
Newman's disciples were astonished and grieved to find that he
sat down to four courses of fish during Lent. 'I am sorry to
say,' remarked one of them afterwards, 'that there is a lobster
salad side to the Cardinal.'
It was a melancholy fate which ordained that the last years of
this comfortable, easygoing, innocent old man should be
distracted and embittered by the fury of opposing principles and
the venom of personal animosities. But so it was. He had fallen
into the hands of one who cared very little for the gentle
pleasures of repose. Left to himself, Wiseman might have
compromised with the Old Catholics and Dr. Errington; but when
Manning had once appeared upon the scene, all compromise became
impossible. The late Archdeacon of Chichester, who had understood
so well and practised with such careful skill the precept of the
golden mean so dear to the heart of the Church of England, now,
as Provost of Westminster, flung himself into the fray with that
unyielding intensity of fervour, that passion for the extreme and
the absolute, which is the very lifeblood of the Church of Rome.
Even the redoubtable Dr. Errington, short, thickset, determined,
with his `hawk-like expression of face', as a contemporary
described him, 'as he looked at you through his blue spectacles',
had been known to quail in the presence of his, antagonist, with
his tall and graceful figure, his pale ascetic features, his
compressed and icy lips, his calm and penetrating gaze.
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