A letter of Dr. Newman's that has just been published
in the Tablet, gives a characteristic and amusing denial to a new version of the old report that he is contemplating a return to the Anglican Church. "I have been a Catholic," he writes, "for twenty-five years, and through all that time the report has gone about, now subsiding and then reviving, that I am going to return to the Anglican Church ; and I suppose it will go about till I die. And when I am dead, if you live till then, you will hear it asserted, as if on the best authority, that I died a Protestant, or, at least, not a Catholic. I have again and again publicly contra- dicted the report, but it has too tough a vitality to dread anything I may say to it. It defies me." These reports are, in fact, excellent illustrations of Dr. Strauss's myths,—hopes crystallized into assertions. But they are not wise hopes. No one who has read Dr. Newman's " Development " and "Apologia," and seen how all the thoughts of his life converged towards his present faith, could doubt that he would rest in it for his mortal life at least :— " For myself," he adds in this letter, "I have never had a single doubt on the subject, thank God, since I have been a Catholic ; and never the slightest, however transient, wish to return to the Church of England, or regret at having left it."
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