A Wonderful Man.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 411, 1 February 1890, Page 3

A Wonderful Man.

A CHEAT dell was heard of Cardinal Man, ning during the recent strikes iu London, and the following interesting sketch of that respected gentleman is given by a Hew York paper (—At Westminster you will find another man who is to-day doing the work of two ordinary men, although he is more than two years older than Gladstone. You may see his spare figure on platforms here In London and elsewhere whenever any movement in b«U >lf of temperance, the London poor, or s i,ie important public reform is put under way. You may even see him, with one attendant perhaps, inspecting some of the poorer districts of London, and you woulcj scarcely swspoct that the active old man was eighty-one years old last month, But he was, '1 his tnau is none other than Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning, Arch, bishop of Westminster and head of the Roman hierarchy in England, Cardinal Newman was the son of a banker. Cardinal Manning was the son ef a respectable merchant and member of Parliament, and so, like the former, was jn a ppsjtipn to obtain a good education. The young men were together at Oxford, and Manning was much influenced by the finer and more powerful mind of Newman. Like Newman, he was ordained in the English Church, and before ha left it was Archdeacon of Chichester. Lika Newman, he is a convert, having entered the Catholic Church in 1831, Like Newman, too, he is to-day one of the popular men in England. H ere the likeness between the men ends. Nowipqn's Hfp has been spent with his books and Writings, except for h|s work at the Orotary. He la but little seen in the outside world. But Cardinal Mapnins js in and of the world, anfi is a more familiar figure generally about Lindon, leaving tfie vicinity of the House of Commons out of the matter, than Parnell, the Irish lender, is, Not that Cardinal Manning is not a writer. Ho has, iu fact, written much. But it is as a man of action that he is best known now.

The life of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster is a very busy one. He has all Ills life been a prodigious worker, like Gladstone. When he was (appointed a priest in one of the poorer parishes in London in 1857 hp became intensely interested in the people among whom he was appointed tp work, aiid in all schemes haying for their object the amelioration of the wretched condition of the hundreds of thousands in this great human hive.

As scon as possible after devotion and prayers the old man is in his office attending to his correspondence and receiving and directing subordinates. This is no easy task. Besides being Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning is the practical head,of the Catholic temperance movement. Besides, he mor? or less interested in pretty much every reform movement of an qnaoctarian character in London, and, for that matter, in England, and his correspondence with these alone is a heavy one. Then the Cardinal looks after the smallest details of his great archdiocese. Jn the afternoon you may see the Cardinal in almost any part of London. You may meet him in the slums looking after the affairs of some local mission, or you may meet him in some West-End drawing-room, for the Cardinal numbers among bis intimate friends some of the leading lights in the fashionable world of London—and Protestants, too. You are pretty sure to see the tall, spare figure of the Cardinal at any one of a meetings in London on any afternoon. It may be a meeting which has for its object the improvement of the condition of the poor. It may be the meeting of a temperance 'or some other organisation. You are likely to see him cheek by jowl with some minister of the Church of England. In this way Cardinal Manning has done pmeh to remove the bitter sectarian feeling that once existed here, and, in fact, you see very little of it now.