dvise her friends
to seek for it from the same quarter. She wrote to George Blood at a time
when he was in serious difficulties:--

"It gives me the sincerest satisfaction to find that you look for
comfort where only it is to be met with, and that Being in whom you
trust will not desert you. Be not cast down; while we are
struggling with care life slips away, and through the assistance of
Divine Grace we are obtaining habits of virtue that will enable us
to relish those joys that we cannot now form any idea of. I feel
myself particularly attached to those who are heirs of the
promises, and travel on in the thorny path with the same Christian
hopes that render my severe trials a cause of thankfulness when I
_can_ think."

These passages, evangelical in tone, occur in private letters, meant to
be read only by those to whom they were addressed, so that they must be
counted as honest expressions of her convictions and not mere cant. Just
as she wrote freely to her sisters and her intimate friends about her
temporal matters, so without hesitation she talked to them of her
spiritual affairs. Her belief became broader as she grew older. She never
was an atheist like Godwin, or an unbeliever of the Voltaire school. But
as the years went on, and her knowledge of the world increased, her
religion concerned itself more with conduct and less with creed, until
she finally gave up going to church altogether. But at the time of which
we are writing she was regular in her attendance, and, though not
strictly orthodox, clung to certain forms. The mere fact that she
possessed definite ideas upon the subject while she was young shows the
naturally serious bent of her mind. She had received the most superficial
religious education. Her belief, such as it was, was wholly the result of
her own desire to solve the problems of existence and of the world beyond
the senses. It is this fact, and the inferences to be drawn from it,
which make her piety so well worth recording.

There seem to have been several schemes for work afoot just then. One was
that the two sisters and Fanny Blood, who, some time before, had
expressed herself willing and anxious to leave home, should join their
fortunes. Fanny could paint and draw. Mary and Eliza could take in
needlework until more pleasant and profitable employment could be
procured. Poverty and toil would be more than compensated for by the joy
which fre