such as it is now, gives no help. It is based on the necessity of
forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of future
salvation. She needs no forgiveness unless she takes upon herself a
burden of artificial guilt. She rather feels she has to forgive--
whom or what she does not know. The heaven of the churches and
chapels is remote, unprovable, and cannot affect her in the smallest
degree. There is no religion for her and such as she, excepting
that Catholic Faith of one article only--The clods of the valley
shall be sweet unto him. As I have said, I knew Judith Crowhurst
well, and after she was dead I wrote her biography, because I
believed there are thousands like her in London alone. I hoped that
here and there I might excite sympathy with them. We sympathise
when we sit in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a truer
sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common,
dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is
not provided with metre and scenery.

You were kind enough to get Judith Crowhurst published for me, and
it has had what is called a 'success,' but I doubt if it will do any
good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they
never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed
by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a
pastime or a narcotic. Judith may be admired, but it is by those
who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to
see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will
excuse themselves because she is not entertaining.

I was asked the other day if I was not proud of some of the reviews.
Good God! I would rather have been Alice Ayres, {148} and have died
as she died, than have been famous as the author of the Divine