where self may lose something of its engrossing power." This religious
attitude was not unusual, nor merely conventional and unmeaning. All
the Sedgwick family seem to have been constitutionally religious. The
mother was almost painfully meek in her protest against her husband's
embarking upon a public career; Mr. Sedgwick has been deterred from
joining a church only by some impossible articles of puritan divinity,
but cannot die happy until he has received the communion from Dr.
Channing; "both my sisters were very religious," says Miss Sedgwick;
while the letters I have quoted from two of her brothers, young
lawyers and men of the world, have the devoutness of the psalms. "I
can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me
such a sister," says Robert; and Theodore: "selfish, unthankful as I
am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a
sister." Of course one can use a religious dialect without meaning
much by it, but these Sedgwicks were cultivated people, who thought
for themselves, and did not speak cant to each other.

Since it was a religious impulse that turned Miss Sedgwick's mind to
literature, it is worth while to follow the thread of her spiritual
history. This was written at the age of twenty when she was looking
for a religious experience that never came, and would have considered
herself one of the wicked: "On no subject would I voluntarily be
guilty of hypocricy, and on that which involves all the importance of
our existence I should shrink from the slightest insincerity. You
misunderstood my last letter. I exposed to you a state of mind and
feeling produced, not by religious impressions, but by the convictions
of reason." Of course "reason" was no proper organ of religion; but
besides this defect, her interest in serious things was liable to
interruption "by the cares and pleasures of the world" and, perhaps
worst of all, "I have not a fixed belief on some of the most material
points of our religion." One does not see how a person in this state
of mind should have anything to call "our religion." She seems to have
advanced much further in a letter to her brother Robert, three years
later: "I long to see you give your testimony of your acceptance of
the forgiving love of your Master.

... God grant, in his infinite mercy, that we may all touch the
garment of our Savior's righteousness and be made whole."

The editor of these letters tells us that Miss Sedgwick is no