the source. Then there is the great chapter of the
Dispersal: which Renan (I think) treats as exhibiting the
marvellous genius (!) of the Jews. As to unbroken sequences in the
physical order, they do not trouble me, because we have to do not
with the natural but the moral order, and over this science, or as
I call it natural science, does not wave her sceptre. It is no
small matter, again (if so it be, as I suppose), that, after
warring for a century against miracle as unsustained by
experience, the assailants should now have to abandon that ground,
stand only upon sequence, and controvert the great facts of the
New Testament only by raising to an extravagant and unnatural
height the demands made under the law of testimony in order to
[justify] a rational belief. One admission has to be made, that
death did not come into the world by sin, namely the sin of Adam,
and this sits inconveniently by the declaration of Saint Paul.

Mrs. Ward wrote to thank me for the tone of my article. Her first
intention was to make some reply in the _Nineteenth Century_
itself. It appears that ---- advised her not to do it. But Knowles
told me that he was labouring to bring her up to the scratch
again. There, I said, you show the cloven foot; you want to keep
the _Nineteenth Century_ pot boiling.

I own that your reasons for not being in England did not appear to
me cogent, but it would be impertinent to make myself a judge of
them. The worst of it was that you did not name _any_ date. But I
must assume that you are coming; and surely the time cannot now be
far. Among other things, I want to speak with you about French
novels, a subject on which there has for me been quite recently
cast a most lurid light.

Acton's letters in reply may have convinced Mr. Gladstone that there were
depths in this supreme controversy that he had hardly sounded; and
adversaria that he might have mocked from a professor of the school or
schools of unbelief, he could not in his inner mind make light of, when
coming from the pen of a catholic believer. Before and after the article
on _Robert Elsmere_ appeared, Acton, the student with his vast historic
knowledge and his deep penetrating gaze, warned the impassioned critic of
some historic point overstated or understated, some dangerous breach left
all unguarded, some lack of nicety in definition. Acton's