MY DEAR FELLOW (of the Royal Society, I mean),--I have had it upon my mind these two or three weeks past to write to you; and I really believe that what most hindered me was that I had so many things to say. And yet, I solemnly declare that I cannot remember now what they were. They were things of evanescent meditation, phases of the Great Questions; but for a week or two I have been saying, I will not weary myself so much with them. So you have escaped this time. One thing, however, I do recall, though not of those questions; and that is, reading the Psalms through for my pillow-book. And it is with a kind of astonishment that I have read them. Did you ever look into them with the thought of comparing them with the old Hindoo and Persian or Mohammedan or Greek utterances of devotion? How cold and formal these are, compared with the earnestness, the entreaty, the tenderness of David and Asaph,-the swallowing up of their whole souls into love, trust, and thankfulness! What is this, whence came it, and what does it mean? This phenomenon in Judaa, how are you to explain it, without supposing a special inspiration breathed into the souls of men from the source of all spiritual life and light? The Jewish nature was not [331] more keen than the Greek, or perhaps the Arabians, yet all their religious utterances are but apothegms in presence of the Jewish vitality and experience. I do not deny their grandeur and beauty; but the Bible brings me into another world of thought and feeling,--into a new creation. And when we take into the account the Gospels, we seem to be brought alike out of the old philosophy and the new,--out both from the old formalism and the vast inane and unknown, which the science of to-day conceives of, into new and living relations with the Infinite Love and Goodness. In this, for my part, I rest. To the Same. ST. DAVID'S, Jury 24, 1875.