Oliver Wendell Holmes, to whom I was personally a stranger, wrote to me just such a letter as one might have dreamed of from the "Autocrat": "One of my elderly friends of long ago called a story of mine you may possibly have heard of--_Elsie Venner_--'a medicated novel,' and such she said she was not in the habit of reading. I liked her expression; it titillated more than it tingled. _Robert Elsmere_ I suppose we should all agree is 'a medicated novel'--but it is, I think, beyond question, the most effective and popular novel we have had since _Uncle Tom's Cabin_." A man of science, apparently an agnostic, wrote, severely: "I regret the popularity of _Robert Elsmere_ in this country. Our Western people are like sheep in such matters. They will not see that the book was written for a people with a State Church on its hands, so that a gross exaggeration of the importance of religion was necessary. It will revive interest in theology and retard the progress of rationalism." Another student and thinker from one of the universities of the West, after a brilliant criticism of the novel, written about a year after its publication, winds up, "The book, here, has entered into the evolution of a nation." Goldwin Smith--my father's and uncle's early friend--wrote me from Canada: The Grange, Toronto, _Oct. 31, 1888._ My dear Mrs. Ward,--You may be amused by seeing what a stir you are making even in this sequestered nook of the theological world, and by learning that the antidote to you is _Ben-Hur_. I am afraid, if it were so, I should prefer the poison to the antidote. The state of opinion on this Continent is, I fancy, pretty much that to which Robert Elsmere would bring us--Theism, with Christ as a model of character, but without real belief in the miraculous part of Christianity. Churches are still being everywhere built, money is freely subscribed, young men are pressing into the clerical profession, and religion shows every sign of vitality. I cannot help suspecting, however, that a change is not far off. If it comes, it will come with a vengeance; for over the intellectual dead level of this democracy opinion courses like the tide running in over a flat. As the end of life draws near I feel like the Scotchman who, being on his death-bed when the trial of O'Connell was going on, desired his Minister to pray for him that he might just live to see what came of O'Connell. A wonderful period of transition in all things, however, has begun, and I should like very much to see the result. However, it is too likely that very rough times may be coming and that one will be just as well out of the way. * * * * * Yours most truly, GOLDWIN SMITH.