them and undo the once-made impression.

Martineau and Newman were not of one mind in the matter of religion. The
letters which passed between them show that; but they show, too, that no
dispute separated them. If for a time some painful passage in a letter of
Newman's troubled his friend, the matter was dealt with with
straightforward candour and unfailing forbearance and gentleness. There
were no harsh words between them. Both of them were naturally, innately
sweet and kindly in disposition. Even in matters of dispute which
concerned that subject which occupied so large a part in both their minds,
difference of opinion could not "separate very friends."

It will be remembered that the year before the regular correspondence
between the two began, Martineau had written a paper criticizing Newman's
_Phases of Faith_.

Before giving Newman's letters, perhaps a few words on Martineau himself
would not be out of place here. He came of an old Huguenot family. Mr.
Jackson, from whose biography of him I am quoting, says that Gaston
Martineau, who, tradition tells us, was a surgeon of Dieppe, came to
England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and that
though first he went to London to live, yet that eventually he settled
down at Norwich, and here all his children were born. The youngest of them
became the father of James Martineau, the theologian. He was born in the
same year as Francis Newman, and died just seven years before he did.

In the bringing up and early training of both men there was a large
element of Puritanism. Many of the most severe Calvinistic doctrines held
sway in Newman's home life, and even if the atmosphere was a little less
thickly charged with religious thunderclouds in the early environment of