On Wednesday, Mr. Henry Bright came over to dine. He visited Miss Martineau, at Ambleside, and found her very entertaining, and in a very singular state of doctrine--for she now professes to believe and declare that there is no God and no future life! He says it is wholly impossible to argue with her, because she is so opinionative and dogmatical, and has such a peculiar advantage in putting down her ear-trumpet when she does not choose to hear any reply to her assertions. She has been making some beautiful designs for the windows of her brother’s church, in Liverpool, which are accepted and to be painted thereupon; but she is at enmity with her brother, and has no intercourse with him. MRS. HAWTHORNE: _Letter to her Father._ * * * * * Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, _viva voce_, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of--in plain English--infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.” HENRY BRIGHT: _Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne_. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885. * * * * * [Sidenote: Stated by herself.] I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; _i. e._, that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith. HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letter to Charlotte Brontë_, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman. * * * * *