is called--let those sleep who can. If I
had not known that _your_ mind was broken up rather broadly by truths
out of Swedenborg, I should not have mooted the subject, be sure. (Have
you given up Swedenborg? this by the way.) Having done so, I am anxious
to set you right about Mrs. Stowe. As the author of the most successful
book printed by man or woman, perhaps I a little under-rated her. The
book has genius, but did not strike _me_ as it did some other readers.
Her 'Sunny Memories,' I liked very little. When she came to us in
Florence some years ago, I did not think I should like her, nor did
Robert, but we were both of us surprised and charmed with her simplicity
and earnestness. At Rome last year she brought her inner nature more in
contact with mine, and I, who had looked for what one usually finds in
women, was startled into much admiration and sympathy by finding in her
a largeness and fearlessness of thought which, coming out of a clerical
and puritan _cul-de-sac_, and combined with the most devout and reverent
emotions, really is fine. So you think that since 'Uncle Tom' she has
turned infidel, because of her interest in Spiritualism. Her last words
to me when we parted, were, 'Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ never
see one another for the last time.' That's the attitude of the mind
which you stigmatise as corrupting.

With regard to 'Spiritualism,' so called, you might as well say
'_books_' are dangerous, without specifying the books. Surely you _know_
that every sort of doctrine is enjoined by these means, from Church of
Englandism to Free Love. A lady was with me this very morning, who was
converted from infidelity to Christianity solely by these means, and I
am told that thousands declare the same. As far as I am concerned, I
never heard or read a single communication which impressed me in the
least: what does impress me is the probability of there being
communications at all. I look at the movement. What _are_ these
intelligences, separated yet relating and communicating? What is their
state? what their aspiration? have we had part or shall we have part
with them? is this the corollary of man's life on the earth? or are they
unconscious echoes of his embodied soul? That anyone should admit a fact
(such as a man being lifted into the air, for instance), and not be
interested in it, is so foreign to the habits of my mind (which can't
insulate a fact from an inference, and rest there) that I have not a
wo