eligious doctrine which is entirely unknown to
times of simple tradition. And in these days the critical tendency has
received a novel stimulus from the successive suggestions of scientific
discovery. No one who, like your son, fully shares in the intellectual
life of the times in which he lives, can live as if this criticism did
not exist. If he affected to ignore it, as an objection already
answered, there would be disingenuousness in the affectation. Fifty
years ago, even twenty or thirty years ago, a highly intellectual young
man might have hardened into the fixed convictions of middle age without
any external disturbance, except such as might have been easily avoided.
The criticism existed then, in certain circles; but it was not in the
air, as it is now. The life of mankind resembles that of a brook which
has its times of tranquillity, but farther on its times of trouble and
unrest. Our immediate forefathers had the peaceful time for their lot;
those who went before them had passed over very rough ground at the
Reformation. For us, in our turn, comes the recurrent restlessness,
though not in the same place. What we are going to, who can tell? What
we suffer just now, you and many others know too accurately. There are
gulfs of separation in homes of the most perfect love. Our only hope of
preserving what is best in that purest of earthly felicities lies in the
practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for
opinions that are not ours, and a deep trust that the loyal pursuit of
truth cannot but be in perfect accordance with the intentions of the
Creator, who endowed the noblest races of mankind with the indefatigable
curiosity of science. Not to inquire was possible for our forefathers,
but it is not possible for us. With our intellectual growth has come an
irrepressible anxiety to possess the highest truth attainable by us.
This desire is not sinful, not presumptuous, but really one of the best
and purest of our instincts, being nothing else than the sterling
honesty of the intellect, seeking the harmony of concordant truth, and
utterly disinterested.

I may quote, as an illustration of the tendencies prevalent amongst the
noblest and most cultivated young men, a letter from Lady Westmorland to
Mr. Robert Lytton about her accomplished son, the now celebrated Julian
Fane. "We had," she said, "several conversations, during his last
illness, upon religious subjects, about which he had his own pe