One hundred years ago
WE deeply regret to observe that Car- dinal Newman has had a very serious accident, and is suffering not only from the consequences of a fainting-fit, but of the heavy fall which his fainting-fit caused. The latest account of his condi- tion was slightly improved, but a man of eighty-seven does not easily rally from so serious a combination of depressing causes. There are few men in England with whose great spiritual and literary genius so many lives have been closely linked, not only of those belonging to his own communion, but to almost every communion of the religious world, as Cardinal Newman.
MRS Temple — the wife of the Bishop of London — writes a good letter to Tuesday's Times in favour of what she calls 'an inebriate home for women,' which is just what she does not mean; the house is to be a home for inebriate women, but it is not to be an inebriate home; quite the reverse. We suppose this curious transposition of the adjec- tive is made by way of avoiding the application of a disagreeable adjective to the patients of the home. But when the true meaning is so very obvious, and when it is so very essential to the success of the home that the meaning should be emphatically expressed, it is surely not very wise to spoil the English of the institution's name, for the sake of an inappreciable delicacy of expression.
The Spectator, 3 November 1888
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