ed them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a
fashion, as some greater philosophers have done--and went out one day
with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the
housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my
favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon
as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of
general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's
prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends'
afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a
supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy
and met my general views exactly.... 'O God, if there be a God, save
my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful
children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is
wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as
well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in
which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds
all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read
Gibbon's history--it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"--and
none of the books on _this_ side, mind!' So I was very obedient and
never touched the books on _that_ side, and only read instead Tom
Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,'
and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary
Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking
towards, and which were not 'on _that_ side' certainly, but which did
as well.

How I am writing!--And what are the questions you did not answer? I
shall remember them by the answers I suppose--but your letters always
have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.

But this is the end _indeed_.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday Night.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Ever dearest--how you can write touching things to me; and how my
whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from
God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only,
it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it
was what you _supposed_, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we
will not talk of it any more.

_Friday morning._--For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I
have thought a great deal, and there are