His delicate mind, with its
refinements, its hesitations, its complexities--his soft,
spectacled, Oxford manner, with its half-effeminate diffidence-
such things were ill calculated to impress a throng of busy
Cardinals and Bishops, whose days were spent amid the practical
details of ecclesiastical organisation, the long-drawn
involutions of papal diplomacy, and the delicious bickerings of
personal intrigue. And when, at last, he did succeed in making
some impression upon these surroundings, it was no better; it was
worse. An uneasy suspicion gradually arose; it began to dawn upon
the Roman authorities that Dr. Newman was a man of ideas. Was it
possible that Dr. Newman did not understand that ideas in Rome
were, to say the least of it, out of place? Apparently, he did
not-- nor was that all; not content with having ideas, he
positively seemed anxious to spread them. When that was known,
the politeness in high places was seen to be wearing decidedly
thin. His Holiness, who on Newman's arrival had graciously
expressed the wish to see him 'again and again', now, apparently,
was constantly engaged. At first Newman supposed that the growing
coolness was the result of misapprehension; his Italian was
faulty, Latin was not spoken at Rome, his writings had only
appeared in garbled translations. And even Englishmen had
sometimes found his arguments difficult to follow.
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