"Do not take it into your head, my dear B. that the tide is at all turning against you in England. Till I see some symptoms of people _forgetting_ you a little, I will not believe that you lose ground. As it is, 'te veniente die, te, decedente,'--nothing is hardly talked of but you; and though good people sometimes bless themselves when they mention you, it is plain that even _they_ think much more about you than, for the good of their souls, they ought. Cain, to be sure, _has_ made a sensation; and, grand as it is, I regret, for many reasons, you ever wrote it. * * For myself, I would not give up the _poetry_ of religion for all the wisest results that _philosophy_ will ever arrive at. Particular sects and creeds are fair game enough for those who are anxious enough about their neighbours to meddle with them; but our faith in the Future is a treasure not so lightly to be parted with; and the dream of immortality (if philosophers will have it a dream) is one that, let us hope, we shall carry into our last sleep with us."[77] [Footnote 77: It is to this sentence Lord Byron refers at the conclusion of his letter, March 4.] "February 19. 1822. "I have written to the Longmans to try the ground, for I do _not_ think Galignani the man for you. The only thing he can do is what we can do, ourselves, without him,--and that is, employ an English bookseller. Paris, indeed, might be convenient for such refugee works as are set down in the _Index Expurgatorius_ of London; and if you have any political catamarans to explode, this is your place. But, _pray_, let them be only political ones. Boldness, and even licence, in politics, does good,--actual, present good; but, in religion, it profits neither here nor hereafter; and, for myself, such a horror have I of both extremes on this subject, that I know not _which_ I hate most, the bold, damning bigot, or the bold, annihilating infidel. 'Furiosa res est in tenebris impetus;'--and much as we are in the dark, even the wisest of us, upon these matters, a little modesty, in unbelief as well as belief, best becomes us. You will easily guess that, in all this, I am thinking not so much of you, as of a friend and, at present, companion of yours, whose influence over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what Lady B. _ought_ to have found out, that you are a person the most tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own I dread and deprecate most earnestly."[78]