I discountenance
all obtrusive professions of and tradings in religion, as one of the
main causes why real Christianity has been retarded in this world; and
because my observation of life induces me to hold in unspeakable dread
and horror, those unseemly squabbles about the letter which drive the
spirit out of hundreds of thousands." In precisely similar tone, to a
reader of _Edwin Drood_ (Mr. J. M. Makeham), who had pointed out to him
that his employment as a figure of speech of a line from Holy Writ in
his tenth chapter might be subject to misconstruction, he wrote from
Gadshill on Wednesday the eighth of June, 1870. "It would be quite
inconceivable to me, but for your letter, that any reasonable reader
could possibly attach a scriptural reference to that passage. . . . I am
truly shocked to find that any reader can make the mistake. I have
always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and
lessons of our Saviour; because I feel it; and because I re-wrote that
history for my children--every one of whom knew it, from having it
repeated to them, long before they could read, and almost as soon as
they could speak. But I have never made proclamation of this from the
house tops."[291]

A dislike of all display was rooted in him; and his objection to
posthumous honours, illustrated by the instructions in his will, was
very strikingly expressed two years before his death, when Mr. Thomas
Fairbairn asked his help to a proposed recognition of Rajah Brooke's
services by a memorial in Westminster Abbey. "I am very strongly
impelled" (24th of June 1868) "to comply with any request of yours. But
these posthumous honours of committee, subscriptions, and Westminster
Abbey are so profoundly unsatisfactory in my eyes that--plainly--I would
rather have nothing to do with them in any case. My daughter and her
aunt unite with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Fairbairn, and I hope you
will believe in the possession of mine until I am quietly buried without
any memorial but such as I have set up in my lifetime." Asked a year
later (August 1869) to say something on the inauguration of Leigh Hunt's
bust at his grave in Kensal-green, he told the committee that he had a
very strong objection to speech-making beside graves. "I do not expect
or wish my feelings in this wise to guide other men; still, it is so
serious with me, and the idea of ever being the subject of such a
ceremony myself is so repugnant to my soul, that I must