this novel of _The Vicar of Wrexhill_. It is a great pity that the
heroine ever set forth on such a foolish errand; she has only harmed
herself and her cause (as a bad advocate always will), and had much
better have remained home, pudding-making or stocking-mending, than have
meddled with matters which she understands so ill.

In the first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex), she is
guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and having
very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion, she makes
up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A woman's
religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head. She goes
through, for the most part, no tedious process of reasoning, no dreadful
stages of doubt, no changes of faith: she loves God as she loves her
husband--by a kind of instinctive devotion. Faith is a passion with her,
not a calculation; so that, in the faculty of believing, though they far
exceed the other sex, in the power of convincing they fall far short of
them.

Oh! we repeat once more, that ladies would make puddings and mend
stockings! that they would not meddle with religion (what is styled
religion, we mean), except to pray to God, to live quietly among their
families, and move lovingly among their neighbours! Mrs. Trollope, for
instance, who sees so keenly the follies of the other party--how much
vanity there is in Bible Meetings--how much sin even at Missionary
Societies--how much cant and hypocrisy there is among those who
desecrate the awful name of God, by mixing it with their mean interests
and petty projects--Mrs. Trollope cannot see that there is any hypocrisy
or bigotry on her part. She, who designates the rival party as false,
and wicked, and vain--tracing all their actions to the basest motives,
declaring their worship of God to be only one general hypocrisy, their
conduct at home one fearful scene of crime, is blind to the faults on
her own side. Always bitter against the Pharisees, she does as the
Pharisees do. It is vanity, very likely, which leads these people to use
God's name so often, and to devote all to perdition who do not coincide
in their peculiar notions. Is Mrs. Trollope less vain than they when she
declares, and merely _declares_, her own to be the real creed, and
stigmatises its rival so fiercely? Is Mrs. Trollope serving God, in
making abusive licencious pictures of those who serve Him in a different
way? Once, as Mrs. Tr