Sunday, May 29th.—­An “eternal, cursed, cold, and heavy rain,” as Dante sings.  My mother, A——­, and I went to the Swiss church; the service is shorter and more unceremonious than I like; that sitting to sing God’s praise, and standing to pray to Him, is displeasing to all my instincts of devotion.

After church my mother was reading Milton’s treatise on Christian doctrine, and read portions of it aloud to me.  I always feel afraid of theological or controversial writings, and yet the faith that shrinks from being touched lest it should totter is certainly not on the right foundation.  I suppose we ought, on the contrary, to examine thoroughly the reason of the faith that is in us.  Declining reading upon religious subjects may be prudent, but it may be indolence, cowardice, or lack of due interest in the matter.  I think I must read that treatise of Milton’s.

                                 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, May 29th, 1831. 
     MY DEAREST H——­,

I have but little time for letter-writing, getting daily “deeper and deeper still” in the incessant occupations of one sort and another that crowd upon and almost overwhelm me; and now my care is not so much whether I shall have time to write you a long letter, as how I shall get leisure to write to you at all.  You complain that, in spite of the present interest I profess in public affairs, I have given you no details of my opinion about them—­my hopes or fears of the result of the Reform movement.  I have other things that I care more to write to you about than politics, and am chary of my space, because, though I can cross my letter, I can only have one sheet of paper.  “The Bill,” modified as it now is, has my best prayers and wishes, for to say that the removal of certain abuses will not give the people bread which they expect is nothing against it; but, at the same time that I sincerely hope this measure will be carried, I cannot conceive what Government will do next, for though trade is at this moment prosperous, great poverty and discontent exist among large classes of the people, and as soon as these needy folk find out that Reform is really not immediate bread and cheese and beer, they will seek something else which they may imagine will be those desired items of existence, and that is what it may be difficult to give them.  In the mean time party spirit here has reached a tremendous pitch; old friendships are broken up and old intimacies cease; former cordial acquaintances refuse to meet each other, houses are divided, and the dearest relations disturbed, if not destroyed.  Society is become a sort of battle-field, for every man (and woman too) is nothing if not political.  In fact, there really appears to be no middle or moderating party, which I think strange and to be deplored.  It seems as if it were a mere struggle between the nobility and the mobility, and the middle-class—­that