ence to religious subjects was infrequent among us. God's
service in that house took the daily and hourly form of the
conscientious discharge of duty, unselfish, tender affection toward each
other, and kindly Christian charity toward all. At various times in my
life, when hearing discussions on the peculiar (technical, I should be
disposed to call it) profession and character supposed by some very good
people of a certain way of thinking to be the only indication of what
they considered real religion, I have remembered the serene, courageous
self-devotion of my dear friend, when, during a dangerous (as it was at
one time apprehended, fatal) illness of her youngest daughter, she would
leave her child's bedside to go to the theater, and discharge duties
never very attractive to her, and rendered distasteful then by cruel
anxiety, but her neglect of which would have injured the interests of
her brother, her fellow-actors, and all the poor people employed in the
theater, and been a direct infringement of her obligations to them. I
have wondered what amount of religion a certain class of "professing
Christians" would have allowed entered into that great effort.

We attended habitually a small chapel served by the Rev. William
Shannon, an excellent but not exciting preacher, who was a devoted
friend of Mrs. Harry Siddons; and occasionally we went to Dr. Allison's
church and heard him--then an old man--preach, and sometimes his young
assistant, Mr. Sinclair, whose eloquent and striking sermons, which
impressed me much, were the only powerful direct appeals made to my
religious sentiments at that time. I rather incline to think that I had,
what a most unclerical young clergyman of my acquaintance once assured
me I had, a natural turn for religion. I think it not unlikely that a
great deal of the direct religious teaching and influences of my Paris
school-days was, as it were, coming up again to the surface of my mind,
and occupying my thoughts with serious reflections upon the most
important subjects. The freedom I enjoyed gave scope and leisure to my
character to develop and strengthen itself; and to the combined
healthful repose and activity of all my faculties, the absence of all
excitement and irritation from external influences, the pure moral
atmosphere and kindly affection by which I lived surrounded during this
happy year, I attribute whatever perception of, desire for, or endeavor
after goodness I was first consciously