You really astonish me, dearest Fanny, so much by your letter, that I must reply to it at once.  I ask myself under what new influence (strictly clerical) is she now, that she should write so?  And has she forgotten me, never read ‘Aurora Leigh,’ never heard of me or from me that, before ‘Spiritualism’ came up in America, I have been called orthodox by infidels, and heterodox by church-people; and gone on predicting to such persons as came near enough to me in speculative liberty of opinion to justify my speaking, that the present churches were in course of dissolution, and would have to be followed by a reconstruction of Christian essential verity into other than these middle-age scholastic forms.  Believing in Christ’s divinity, which is the life of Christianity, I believed this.  Otherwise, if the end were here—­if we were to be covered over and tucked in with the Thirty-nine Articles or the like, and good-night to us for a sound sleep in ’sound doctrine’—­I should fear for a revealed religion incapable of expansion according to the needs of man.  What comes from God has life in it, and certainly from all the growth of living things, spiritual growth cannot be excepted.  But I shun religious controversy—­it is useless.  I never ‘disturb anybody’s mind,’ as it is called—­let those sleep who can.  If I had not known that your mind was broken up rather broadly by truths out of Swedenborg, I should not have mooted the subject, be sure. (Have you given up Swedenborg? this by the way.) Having done so, I am anxious to set you right about Mrs. Stowe.  As the author of the most successful book printed by man or woman, perhaps I a little under-rated her.  The book has genius, but did not strike me as it did some other readers.  Her ‘Sunny Memories,’ I liked very little.  When she came to us in Florence some years ago, I did not think I should like her, nor did Robert, but we were both of us surprised and charmed with her simplicity and earnestness.  At Rome last year she brought her inner nature more in contact with mine, and I, who had looked for what one usually finds in women, was startled into much admiration and sympathy by finding in her a largeness and fearlessness of thought which, coming out of a clerical and puritan cul-de-sac, and combined with the most devout and reverent emotions, really is fine.  So you think that since ‘Uncle Tom’ she has turned infidel, because of her interest in Spiritualism.  Her last words to me when we parted, were, ’Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ never see one another for the last time.’  That’s the attitude of the mind which you stigmatise as corrupting.