ost interesting
letter, which contains very valuable warnings. On the other side
is copied what I have written on two of the points raised by the
book. Have I said too much of the Academy? I have spoken only of
the first century. You refer to (apparently) about 250 A.D. as a
time of great progress? But I was astonished on first reading the
census of Christian clergy in Rome _temp._ St. Cyprian, it was so
slender. I am not certain, but does not Beugnot estimate the
Christians, before Constantine's conversion, in the west at
one-tenth of the population? Mrs. T. Arnold died yesterday here.
Mrs. Ward had been summoned and she is coming to see me this
evening. It is a very singular phase of the controversy which she
has opened. When do you _repatriate_?

I am afraid that my kindness to the Positivists amounts only to a
comparative approval of their not dropping the great human
tradition out of view; _plus_ a very high appreciation of the
personal qualities of our friend ----.

_To Lord Acton._

_Dollis Hill, May 13, '88._--Your last letter was one of extreme
interest. It raised such a multitude of points, after your perusal
of my article on R. Elsmere, as to stimulate in the highest degree
my curiosity to know how far you would carry into propositions,
the ideas which you for the most part obliquely put forward. I
gave the letter to Mary, who paid us a flying visit in London,
that she might take it to Hawarden for full digestion. For myself
I feed upon the hope that when (when ?) you come back to England
we may go over the points, and I may reap further benefits from
your knowledge. I will not now attempt anything of the kind. But I
will say this generally, that I am not so much oppressed as you
appear to be, with the notion that great difficulties have been
imported by the researches of scientists into the religious and
theological argument. As respects cosmogony and _geogony_, the
Scripture has, I think, taken much benefit from them. Whatever be
the date of the early books, Pentateuch or Hexateuch in their
present _edition_, the Assyriological investigations seem to me to
have fortified and accredited their substance by producing similar
traditions in variant forms inferior to the Mosaic forms, and
tending to throw them back to a higher antiquity, a fountainhead
nearer