Ever yrs,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
P.S.—I am publishing my Univ. Sermons. You got a headache for one— it would be an act of gratitude to send you all. Shall I do so?
J. R. Hope, Esq. to the Rev. J. H. Newman.
6 Stone Buildings, Linc. Inn: Feast of Purification [Feb. 2], '43.
Dear Newman,—You will think me ungracious for having so long delayed my answer to your last, but I did not get hold of the Conservative Journal till Monday, and have been very busy since.
Perhaps you will like to know what effect your article has produced on me. Simply this: it has convinced me that you are clearing your position of some popular protections which still surrounded it. Beyond this I do not see. I mean it does not show me that, esoterically, you have made any great move, nor yet that, to the world at large, you are disposed to do more than say, 'Do not cry me up as a champion against Popery; for the rest, you may judge of me as you please.' People whom I have heard speak of it (few, perhaps, but fair samples) are rather puzzled than anything else.
I give you this merely as gossip, and not as asking whether my construction is right, though if you think it material or useful to tell me, of course I shall be glad.
I need not say that I shall be very thankful for a copy of your sermons— that is, if you will write my name in it yourself; otherwise I will buy the book, for Rivington's 'from the author' does not fix the stamp which I chiefly value.
Do you observe in the papers that Sir R. P. is designing great things for the Church? It gives me some hopes that they will also be good, to see that Gladstone is in his councils. We shall have much ado about the Eccl. Courts Bill, which, I believe, is certainly to come on. I am in some hopes we may make it an instrument for drawing a line between us and the Dissenters, but must not be sanguine.