I have received, from the author, M. Émile de Lavelaye, his pamphlet,—“Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations, with an introductory Letter by Mr. Gladstone.” I do not know why M. de Lavelaye sent me this pamphlet. I thank him for the courtesy; but he has evidently read none of my books, or must have been aware that he could not have written anything more contrary to the positions which I am politically maintaining. On the other hand, I have read none of his books, and I gather from passages in his pamphlet that there may be much in them to which I should be able to express entire adhesion. But of the pamphlet in question, and its preface, he will, I trust, pardon my speaking in the same frank terms which I should have used had it accidentally come under my notice, instead of by the author’s gift. The pamphlet is especially displeasing to me, because it speaks of ‘Liberty’ under the common assumption of its desirableness; whereas my own teaching has been, and is, that Liberty, whether in the body, soul, or political estate of men, is only another word for Death, and the final issue of Death, putrefaction: the body, spirit, and political estate being alike healthy only by their bonds and laws; and by Liberty being instantly disengaged into mephitic vapour. But the matter of this pamphlet, no less than the assumption it is based on, is hateful to me; reviving, as it does, the miserable question of the schism between Catholic and Protestant, which is entirely ridiculous and immaterial; and taking no note whatever of the true and eternal schism, cloven by the very sword of Michael, between him that serveth God, and him that serveth Him not. (The passage now and henceforward omitted in this place, contained an attack on Mr. Gladstone written under a complete misconception of his character. See, for explanation of it, the beginning of the third letter in the second series of Fors. The blank space is left partly in order not to confuse the Index references, partly in due memorial of rash judgment.) The fact being that I am, at this central time of my life’s work, at pause because I cannot set down any form of religious creed so simple, but that the requirement of its faithful signature by persons desiring to become Companions of St. George, would exclude some of the noblest champions of justice and charity now labouring for men; while, on the other hand, I cannot set down the first principles of children’s noble education without finding myself in collision with an almost resistless infidel mob, which is incapable of conceiving—how much less of obeying—the first laws of human decency, order, and honour. So that indeed I am fain to ask, with my Leeds correspondent, in last Fors, page 234, what is to be done for young folks to whom “music has little attraction, except in the form of dance, and pictures are nothing”?