My mother has just requested me to talk with A——­ about her approaching first communion, and it troubles me because I fear I cannot do so satisfactorily to her (I mean my mother) and myself.  I think my feeling about the sacrament, or rather the preparation necessary for receiving it, is different from hers.  It is not so much to me an awful as a merciful institution.  One goes to the Lord’s Table because one is weak and wicked and wretched, not because one is, or even has striven to be, otherwise.  A holy reverence for the holy rite is indispensable, but not, I think, such a feeling as would chill us with fear, or cast us down in despondency.  The excess of our poverty and humility is our best claim to it, and therefore, though the previous “preparations,” as it is rather technically called, may be otherwise beneficial, it does not seem to me necessary, much less indispensable.  Our Lord did not say, “Cleanse yourselves, amend yourselves, strip yourselves of your own burdens and come to me;” but, “Come to me and I will cleanse you, I will cure you, I will help you and give you rest.”  It is remembering this that I venture to take the sacrament, but I know other people, and I believe my mother among them, think a much more specific preparation necessary, and I am afraid, therefore, that I might not altogether meet my mother’s views in what I might say to A——­ upon the subject.  I wish you would tell me what your opinion and feeling is about this.

Your affectionate F. A. K.

Sunday, May 15th.—­Walked home from church with Mrs. Montagu and Emily and Mrs. Procter, discussing among various things the necessity for “preparation” before taking the sacrament.  I suppose the publican in the parable had not prepared his prayer, and I suppose he would have been a worthy communicant.

They came in and sat a long time with my mother talking about Sir Thomas Lawrence, of whom she spoke as a perfect riddle.  I think he was a dangerous person, because his experience and genius made him delightfully attractive, and the dexterity of his flattery amounted in itself to a fine art.  The talk then fell upon the possibility of friendship existing between men and women without sooner or later degenerating, on one part or the other, into love.  The French rhymster sings—­

“Trop tot, helas, l’amour s’enflamme,
Et je sens qu’il est mal aise;
Que l’ami d’une belle dame,
Ne soit un amant deguise.”

My father came in while the ladies were still here, and Mrs.
Procter behaved admirably well about her husband’s play....

I do think it is too bad of the management to have made use of my name in rejecting that piece, when, Heaven knows, so far from rejecting, I never even object to anything I am bidden to do; that is, never visibly or audibly....

Mrs. P——­ called, and the talk became political and lugubriously desponding,