her
thing is it to be afloat alone, where, because it is fifty miles away,
land _cannot_ be seen. Doubtless it may seem foolish, but I am not able
to tell the feelings of that time.

Becalmed midway between France and England, it was natural for the mind
to think of both countries, and every time I have left France it has been
with more admiration of that lively land; {171} but Frenchmen, during
this visit, looked at by us for the twentieth time, had evident signs of
wounded vanity: they were conscious of playing second fiddle in a grand
German opera.

Thinking of England, on the other hand, religion and not politics became
the theme; for is not religion at least more considered amongst us than
ever before? It may be opposed or misapprehended or derided, but it is
not ignored as it used to be.

Look at the three leading newspapers, the morning, the evening, and the
weekly registers of the direction, warmth, and pressure of public
thought, as noted by keen observers, who are shrewd and weatherwise as to
the signs of the times, and are seldom wrong when they hoist a storm
signal. More and more each of these secular papers occupies its best
columns with religious questions, and not with the mere facts or gossip
on the subject, or with records of philanthropy, important as these are,
but with deep essential doctrines, and prolonged arguments about the very
kernel of truth.

Religion is allowed to have a place now in every stratum of society, even
if a wrong place and a very uncomfortable place for a slender religion,
though sometimes, indeed, a politician laments that "Parliament has its
time occupied by the subject," as if it were possible for the House to
settle the Church and the School and the homes of men, without also
considering their religion.

And if almost each family gives some place or other to it, so perhaps no
one man in England would allow any other man to say of him that he has
"nothing to do with religion."

Religion is more present among us; but this is a wide term--'religion.'
If there is a God, then that there is a revealed religion is
acknowledged, and that the Christian religion has the best, if not the
only claims to be this. Who is to decide for me as to whether there is a
God?

If ignorance unfits me to judge this rightly, does not class prejudice
unfit others to be the arbiters?

Are not the official exponents of theology liable to be prejudiced in its
favour as something that establ