assailants, came actually to delude themselves into a belief that slavery was legitimate, wise, and expedient--a positive good in itself."[170] At a subsequent period he speaks of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's famous book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," as "a gross caricature." But in the great struggle between the Northern and Southern States, his sympathies went with the former. It was the fairness of his criticisms, and his hearty appreciation of the good side in American institutions, that won him many friends and made his books welcome on that side of the Atlantic. Lyell's views on religious questions accorded, as might be expected, with the general bent of his mind. He was a member of the Church of England,[171] appreciated its services, the charm of music, and the beauty of architecture, but he failed to understand why nonconformity should entail penalties, whether legal or social. His mind was essentially undogmatic; feeling that certainty was impossible in questions where the ordinary means of verification could not be employed, he abstained from speculation and shrank from formulating his ideas, even when he was convinced of their general truth. He was content, however, to believe where he could not prove, and to trust, not faintly, the larger hope. So he worked on in calm confidence that the honest searcher after truth would never go far astray, and that the God of Nature and of Revelation was one. He sought in this life to follow the way of righteousness, justice, and goodness, and he died in the hope of immortality. As he disapproved of any approach to persecution on the ground of religion, so he objected strongly to the exclusive privileges which in his day were enjoyed by the Church of England, especially to its virtual monopoly of education. On this point he several times expresses himself in forcible terms; as, for instance, in these words: "The Church of England ascendency is really the power which is oppressive here, and not the monarchy, nor the aristocracy. Perhaps I feel it too sensitively as a scientific man, since our Puseyites have excluded physical science from Oxford. They are wise in their generation. The abject deference to authority advocated conscientiously by them can never survive a sound philosophical education."[172] To this party--or to the "Catholic movement," as it is now often called--in the Church of England, Lyell had a strong dislike; he deemed their claims to authority unwarrantable, their practices in many respects either childish or superstitious.