14 Queen St.: Oct. 21, 1851.—… I am once more in my old quarters. They bring back strange remembrances. What revolutions have passed since we started from this room that Saturday morning! And how blessed an end! as the soul said to Dante. 'E da martirio venni a questa pace.'… You do not need that I should say how sensibly I remember all your sympathy, which was the only human help in the time when we two went together through the trial, which to be known must be endured.
Rome: March 17, 1852…—How this time reminds me of last year! On Passion Sunday I shall be in Retreat. 'Stantes erant pedes nostri,' [Footnote: These words were written in a copy of the Speculum Vitae Sacerdotalis, given by J. R. Hope to H. E. Manning in April 1851. [Note by his Eminence Cardinal Manning.] and we made no mistake in our long reckoning, though we feared it up to the last opening of Fr. B.'s door.
H. E. M.
The superficial impression which many of his friends had of Mr. Hope's conversion at the time will be illustrated by the following remarks, one of them made to me in conversation with a view to this memoir: 'Mr. Hope was a man with two lives: one, that of a lawyer; the other, that of a pious Christian, who said his prayers, and did not give much thought to controversy. He would be rather influenced by patent facts. He was not at all moving with the stream, and rather laughed at X. with his "narrow views." He was a strong Anglican, an adherent of learned Anglicanism. His conversion took Catholics by surprise, who were not aware how far he went.' The feeling in society as to his change was marked by a tone of much greater consideration than was commonly displayed in such cases, of which proof is given in an interesting letter which I have quoted in a former page. 'As far as I know' (writes Lady Georgiana Fullerton) 'there was no attempt made, in Mr. Hope's case, to trace that act to any of the causes which, in almost every other instance, were supposed to account for conversions to Catholicism. The frankness of his nature, his well-known good sense, the sound clearness of his judgment, so unmistakably evinced in his profession, precluded the possibility of attributing his adoption of the Catholic faith to weakness of mind, duplicity, sentiment, eccentricity, or excitability.'
I reserve what may be called the domestic side of this crowning event of Mr. Hope's religious life to a future chapter. The following is the letter alluded to by Mr. Gladstone in his letter to Miss Hope-Scott, given in Appendix III., and on which he wrote the words 'Quis desiderio.' [Footnote: Let me balance Mr. Gladstone's Quis desiderio with a note written by Père Roothaan, Father-General of the Jesuits, to Count Senfft, on hearing of Mr. Hope's conversion:—
'Plurimam salutem nostro C. de Senfft, qui procul dubio maxima cum congratulatione accepit notitiam de conversione ad rel. cath. praeclari Dni. Hope, Anglicani, quem ipse comes Monachio Romam venientem mihi commendaverat. Ipsum tunc et iterum et tertio Romam intra hos tres annos venientem videram saepius, et semper vicinior mihi visus fuerat regno Dei. Nuper tandem cessit gratiae. Alleluja!'—Given in a letter of Count Senfft's to Mr. Hope-Scott, dated Innsbruck: 1 Juin, 1851.]
J. R. Hope, Esq., Q.C. to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.
14 Curzon Street: June 18, '51.
My dear Gladstone,—I am very much obliged for the book which you have sent me, but still more for the few words and figures which you have placed upon the title-page. The day of the month in your own handwriting will be a record between us that the words of affection which you have written were used by you after the period at which the great change of my life took place. To grudge any sacrifice which that change entails would be to undervalue its paramount blessedness, but, as far as regrets are compatible with extreme thankfulness, I do and must regret any estrangement from you— you with whom I have trod so large a portion of the way which has led me to peace; you, who are 'ex voto' at least in that Catholic Church which to me has become a practical reality, admitting of no doubt; you, who have so many better claims to the merciful guidance of Almighty God than myself.
It is most comforting, then, to me to know by your own hand that on the 17th June, 1851, the personal feelings so long cherished have been, not only acknowledged by yourself, but expressed to me—I do not ask more just now—it would be painful to you; nay, it would be hardly possible for either of us to attempt (except under one condition, for which I daily pray) the restoration of entire intimacy at present; but neither do I despair under any circumstances that it will yet be restored. Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Gladstone, and believe me,