Byron, I received an answer which showed me that the whole ground was
familiar to her, and that she was capable of giving me full information.
She had studied with careful thoughtfulness all the social and religious
tendencies of England during her generation. One of her remarks has
often since occurred to me. Speaking of the Oxford movement, she said
the time had come when the English Church could no longer remain as it
was. It must either restore the past, or create a future. The Oxford
movement attempted the former; and of the future she was beginning to
speak, when our conversation was interrupted by the presentation of other
parties.

Subsequently, in reply to a note from her on some benevolent business, I
alluded to that conversation, and expressed a wish that she would finish
giving me her views of the religious state of England. A portion of the
letter that she wrote me in reply I insert, as being very characteristic
in many respects:--

'Various causes have been assigned for the decaying state of the
English Church; which seems the more strange, because the clergy have
improved, morally and intellectually, in the last twenty years. Then
why should their influence be diminished? I think it is owing to the
diffusion of a spirit of free enquiry.

'Doubts have arisen in the minds of many who are unhappily bound by
subscription not to doubt; and, in consequence, they are habitually
pretending either to believe or to disbelieve. The state of Denmark
cannot but be rotten, when to seem is the first object of the
witnesses of truth.

'They may lead better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but