The reader has now been enabled to form an opinion of Mr. Hope-Scott's character and actions in various aspects. The most important of all--his religious life, his services to the Church, and his charities during his Catholic period--remain to be reviewed; and that interval appears the most natural for making such a survey, which comes just before the time when he was visibly approaching the end of his career.
The path by which Mr. Hope-Scott was led to Catholicity has been made sufficiently apparent. We have seen that he was principally influenced by two reasons, affecting, on the one hand, Church order, and on the other, dogma: the Jerusalem Bishopric, which was set up by Anglicans and Lutherans together; and the Gorham judgment, which rejected an article of the Creed. These reasons were, as he acknowledged, _clenched_ by his disgust at the outcry raised against the exercise of Papal authority in the institution of the Catholic hierarchy in England; and perhaps the greater stress ought to be laid upon this last, as it might have been the less expected, because his early ecclesiastical studies, and early contact with Catholic society, were certainly not such as could have led him to views usually classed as 'ultramontane.' On this head it may be sufficient simply to state that, when the time of its promulgation arrived, he rendered, without reservation, the homage of his intellect to the exalted dogma of Infallibility, which in our days has been welcomed by the whole Catholic world from the voice of its Chief Pastor. It is, further, only necessary to refer to his political letter to Mr. Gladstone to see that he endeavoured to make his influence (often so much more effective than any outward agitation) available towards the recovery of the temporal power and the rights of the Holy See.
As to his religious habits as a Catholic, every page of this memoir shows, or might show, that he was a man of great faith, great earnestness, and the most sincere intention to obey the will of God. Yet it must be remembered that his duty called him into the very thick of the battle of life from morning--till night: whilst so engaged (and it was the case during half the year) it was by no means in his power either to attend daily mass or to be a frequent communicant, though, at Abbotsford, he would communicate two or three times a week. But a little anecdote will serve to prove that he took care to place himself in the presence of God in the midst of the busy world in which he moved. He told his friend Serjeant Bellasis that he found he was just able to say the _Angelus_ in the time he took to mount the stairs of the committee-rooms at Westminster. At home he regularly said the _Angelus_; as was noticed by persons who accidentally entered his room at the hours assigned to it, and used to find him standing to say it.