Crying for the Light, Volume 2

There are three distinct classes of Roman Catholic priests-the ascetic and spiritual, the jolly and intellectual, the brutal and Bœotian. Of the first Cardinal Manning is the type. The second was presented to us in the person of Cardinal Wiseman, who made the Romanist priest as famous in his day as Cardinal Manning in ours. Of the third class you may see specimens every day in every Belgian town, and in many parts of England and Ireland. Father O'Bourke was a combination of the two latter types-a man of humour, a plausible speaker, a tremendous orator, and a man whose great art was to be conciliatory to all. He could be very rollicking over a glass of whisky-and-water, but his power was more physical than spiritual. He had something of a domineering tone, the result chiefly of his mixing with the low Irish who emigrate to England, where, like the Gibeonites of old, they become chiefly hewers of stone and drawers of water.

Mr. Wentworth received the priest with all due politeness, as he explained that he had come for a friendly chat.