DEAR MRS. STOWE,—­I seem to feel our friend as a bridge, over which our broken outward communication can be renewed without effort.  Why broken?  The words I would have uttered at one time were like drops of blood from my heart.  Now I sympathise with the calmness you have gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own.  Loss and restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but “to the present live.”  As long as they are in God’s world they are in ours.  I ask no other consolation.

’Mrs. W—–­’s recovery has astonished me, and her husband’s prospects give me great satisfaction.  They have achieved a benefit to their coloured people.  She had a mission which her burning soul has worked out, almost in defiance of death.  But who is “called” without being “crucified,” man or woman?  I know of none.

’I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of your Mammon-worshippers.  With the return of commercial facilities, that article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise its value.  Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown.  A deeper moral earthquake is needed. {148} We English had ours in India; and though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges.  So I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been painted.

’As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by the failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility they show.  It seems to be thought that “association” will “cover a multitude of sins;” as if “and Co.” could enter heaven.  A firm may be described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals.  Even ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the “and Co.;” very different from “the goodly fellowship of the apostles.”

’The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with a mediaeval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much.  The chief reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede benevolence.  The money that would save thousands from perishing or suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last prayer may be uttered.  Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified her.  This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye together.  The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an earthly crown.  True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the spirit before “the kingdom” can come.

’While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are doing—­what?  Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again some great, half- obscured soul to act on the world?  Even Sir Philip Sidney ought to be superseded by a still nobler type.

’This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose
meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both.  May it be
happy!