our Cardinal until their elevation at one and the same time to the Sacred College, when an intimacy at once sprang up, and all opportunities were taken by each for maintaining it. Such was Cardinal Place, Archbishop of Rennes, recently deceased, for a number of kindnesses shown to himself, but especially for his many years of care and attention to an ancient friend of the Cardinal's family, Miss Maria Rosina de Giberne, afterwards Sister Maria Pia of the Visitation at Autun in France-a lady now deceased, who, besides many lesser good offices to the Cardinal, had when he was in a most extraordinary difficulty arising from a legal trial, rendered him a service which was as signal as it was unique. Three others there are-Cardinal Macchi, with whom a first acquaintance placed him, almost at once, on a footing of fraternal intimacy; Cardinal Capecelatro, the present Archbishop of Capua; and Monsignor Stonor, Archbishop of Trebizond. Cardinal Capecelatro, a member of the Oratory at Naples, had from his early life been unremitting in his kindness to our Cardinal, though in this case also they were personally unacquainted until they met in Rome in 1879, when both were there for promotion to honour. The services of Cardinal Capecelatro were such that though our Cardinal could not, from modesty, make mention of them, yet he found an opportunity for acknowledging his sense of them, by dictating from his death-bed a few words of dedication to his Eminence for a small volume which in course of time will be published the delay of which publication suggests the mention of his Eminence's name here. Cardinal Newman's own words of Archbishop Stonor, the last time of speaking of him, will best convey the tribute of gratitude which the Cardinal, with much warmth and earnestness, paid him. 'All these years that I have been Cardinal,' he said, 'Monsignor Stonor has been a friend indeed, for he has let me make use of him whensoever and for whatsoever I have chosen, and I don't know what I should have done without him.' One name more there is to mention-and it belongs to America, where though our Cardinal had so many friends, one was pre-eminently such-that of Bishop James O'Connor, Bishop of Omaha, whose unaffected kindness was most grateful to our Cardinal, lasting as it did through all but the whole of his Catholic lifetime. For Bishop James O'Connor the Cardinal had a great affection, remembering always, with something of gratitude, the modesty and simplicity with which, as a youth, the future Bishop attached himself to him and to Father St. John when the three were at Propaganda together, thus forming a friendship which distance and years did not lessen, and which later on was enlivened by personal intercourse when the visits ad limina Apostolorum brought Bishop O'Connor through England. This list of names drawn together from countries so wide apart suggests that this book must not be regarded as though only for the service of a few friends. It is hoped that the character of the book itself will secure for it a still wider circulation. WM. P. NEVILLE. THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM: Easter 1893. |