It would be idle to deny that Manning's reputation did in some measure suffer. Yet it must in fairness be remembered that an ordeal such as that to which he has been thus subjected is seldom applied, and might, if similarly applied, have lowered many another reputation. Cicero has suffered in like manner. We should have thought more highly of him, though I do not know that we should have liked him better, if his letters had not survived to reveal weaknesses which other men, or their biographers, were discreet enough to conceal.
I have not attempted to rewrite the preceding pages in the light of Mr. Purcell's biography, for to do so would have extended them beyond the limits of a sketch. I have, moreover, found that the disclosures contained in the biography do not oblige me to darken the colours of the sketch itself. Taken all in all, these intimate records of Manning's life tend to confirm the view that, along with his love of power and pre-eminence, along with his carelessness about historic truth, along with the questionable methods he sometimes allowed himself to use, there lay deep in his heart a genuine and unfailing sympathy with many good causes, such as the cause of temperance, and a real tenderness for the poor and for children. If he was far removed from a saint, still less was he the mere worldly ecclesiastic, crafty and ambitious, who has in all ages been a familiar and unlovely type of character.
Edward Freeman was born at Harborne in South Staffordshire on 2nd August 1823, and died at Alicante on 16th March 1892, in the course of an archæological and historical journey to the east and south of Spain, whither he had gone to see the sites of the early Carthaginian settlements. His life was comparatively uneventful, as that of learned men in our time usually is. He was educated at home and at a private school till he went to Oxford at the age of eighteen. There he was elected a scholar of Trinity College in 1841, took his degree (second class in _literae humaniores_) in 1845, and was elected a fellow of Trinity shortly afterwards. Marrying in 1847, he lost his fellowship, and settled in 1848 in Gloucestershire, and at a later time went to live in Monmouthshire, whence he migrated in 1860 to Somerleaze, a pretty spot about a mile and a half to the north-west of Wells in Somerset. Here he lived till 1884, when he was appointed (on the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone) to the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Oxford. Thenceforth he spent the winter and spring in the University, returning for the long vacation to Somerleaze, a place he dearly loved, not only in respect of the charm of the surrounding scenery, but from its proximity to the beautiful churches of Wells and to many places of historical interest. For the greater part of his manhood his surroundings were those of a country gentleman, nor did he ever reconcile himself to town life, for he loved the open sky, the fields and hills, and all wild creatures, though he detested what are called field sports, knew nothing of natural history, and had neither taste nor talent for farming. As he began life with an income sufficient to make a gainful profession unnecessary, he did not prepare himself for any, but gave free scope from the first to his taste for study and research. Thus the record of his life is, with the exception of one or two incursions into the field of practical politics, a record of his historical work and of the journeys he undertook in connection with it.
