“Although you kindly excuse me from doing so, I cannot but express, and almost, wish that you could convey to M. P. the melancholy interest with which we have read his letter. Interesting of course it is but to us—I know not whether to you—it is deeply sad to see a man like M. P. so thoroughly blind to the true situation of his country. Not a word of repentance for the aggressive and unjust war! not a word of acknowledgment that, had the French, as they wished, invaded Germany, they would have entered Berlin and seized the Rhenish provinces without remorse or compunction!—not a spark of appreciation of the moral superiority by which the Germans achieved their successes! I do not doubt that excesses may have been committed by the German troops; but I feel sure that they have been exceeded by those of the French, and would have been yet more had the French entered Germany.
“And how very superfluous to attack us for having done just the same as in 1848! Our sad crime was not to have prevented the war by remonstrating with the French Emperor and people in July, 1870, and of that poor P. takes no account! Alas! for France!
“Yours sincerely,
“A. P. Stanley.”
The following is a rather important note as recording the Dean’s sentiments as regarded Cardinal Newman. I cannot recall what was the paper which I had sent him to which he alludes. I think I had spoken to him of my friendship with Francis Newman, and of the information given me by the latter that he could never remember his brother putting his hand to a single cause of benevolence or moral reform. I had asked him to solicit his support with that of Cardinal Manning (already obtained) to the cause for which I was then beginning to work,—on behalf of animals.
“Jan. 15th, 1875.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I return this with many thanks. I think you must have sent it to me, partly as a rebuke for having so nearly sailed in the same boat of ignorance and inhumanity with Dr. Newman.
“I have just finished, with a mixture of weariness and nausea, his letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Even the fierce innuendoes and deadly thrusts at Manning cannot reconcile me to such a mass of cobwebs and evasions. When the sum of the theological teaching of the two brothers is weighed, will not ‘the Soul’ of Francis be found to counterbalance, as a contribution to true, solid, catholic (even in any sense of the word) Christianity, all the writings of John Henry?
“I have sent my paper on Vestments to the Contemporary.