I am glad that you have been seeing the Cowper Temples. My knowledge of them has not gone beyond dining with them at Mrs. Tollemache's, and afterwards having a good conversational call from them, but they both struck me very agreeably.
Mr. Henry Sidgwick is a chief favorite of mine--one of whom his friends at Cambridge say that they always expect him to act according to a higher standard than they think of attributing to any other chief man, or of imposing on themselves. "Though we kept our own fellowships without believing more than he did," one of them said to me, "we should have felt that Henry Sidgwick had fallen short if he had not renounced his."
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 12th Oct. 1873.]
Our plan is not to give up our London house, but to have a country place as a retreat. We want a good house in a lovely country, _away from rows of villas_, but within easy reach of all conveniences. This seems an immodest requirement in a world where one good is hardly to be got without renunciation of another. You perceive that we are getting very old and fastidious.
I like to interpret your enjoyment of Brighton and its evening skies as a proof that you flourish there physically. All things are to be endured and counted even as a fuller life, with a body free from pain and depressing sensations of weakness; but illness is a partial death, and makes the world dim to us.
We have no great strength to boast of; but we are so unspeakably happy in all other respects that we cannot grumble at this tax on us as elderly mortals.
Our little Blanche grows in grace, and her parents have great delight in her--Charles being quite as fond a father as if he had beforehand been an idolizer of babies.
[Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, Sunday, 20th Oct. 1873.]
The chances of conversation were against my being quite clear to you yesterday as to the cases in which it seems to me that conformity is the higher rule. What happened to be said or not said is of no consequence in any other light than that of my anxiety not to appear what I should _hate to be_--which is surely not an ignoble, egoistic anxiety, but belongs to the worship of the Best.
All the great religions of the world, historically considered, are rightly the objects of deep reverence and sympathy--they are the record of spiritual struggles, which are the types of our own. This is to me pre-eminently true of Hebrewism and Christianity, on which my own youth was nourished. And in this sense I have no antagonism towards any religious belief, but a strong outflow of sympathy. Every community met to worship the highest Good (which is understood to be expressed by God) carries me along in its main current; and if there were not reasons against my following such an inclination, I should go to church or chapel constantly for the sake of the delightful emotions of fellowship which come over me in religious assemblies--the very nature of such assemblies being the recognition of a binding belief or spiritual law, which is to lift us into willing obedience and save us from the slavery of unregulated passion or impulse. And with regard to other people, it seems to me that those who have no definite conviction which constitutes a protesting faith may often more beneficially cherish the good within them and be better members of society by a conformity, based on the recognized good in the public belief, than by a nonconformity which has nothing but negatives to utter. _Not_, of course, if the conformity would be accompanied by a consciousness of hypocrisy. That is a question for the individual conscience to settle. But there is enough to be said on the different points of view from which conformity may be regarded to hinder a ready judgment against those who continue to conform after ceasing to believe, in the ordinary sense. But with the utmost largeness of allowance for the difficulty of deciding in special cases, it must remain true that the highest lot is to have definite beliefs about which you feel that "necessity is laid upon you" to declare them, as something better which you are bound to try and give to those who have the worse.