For the activities of this extraordinary figure were
great and varied. He ruled his diocese with the despotic zeal of
a born administrator. He threw himself into social work of every
kind; he organised charities, he lectured on temperance; he
delivered innumerable sermons; he produced an unending series of
devotional books. And he brooked no brother near the throne:
Newman languished in Birmingham; and even the Jesuits trembled
and obeyed.
Nor was it only among his own community that his energy and his
experience found scope. He gradually came to play an important
part in public affairs, upon questions of labour, poverty, and
education. He sat on Royal Commissions and corresponded with
Cabinet Ministers. At last, no philanthropic meeting at the
Guildhall was considered complete without the presence of
Cardinal Manning. A special degree of precedence was accorded to
him. Though the rank of a Cardinal-Archbishop is officially
unknown in England, his name appeared in public documents-- as a
token, it must be supposed, of personal consideration-- above the
names of peers and bishops, and immediately below that of the
Prince of Wales.
In his private life he was secluded. The ambiguities of his
social position, and his desire to maintain intact the peculiar
eminence of his office, combined to hold him aloof from the
ordinary gatherings of society, though on the rare occasions of
his appearance among fashionable and exalted persons, he carried
all before him.
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