"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world, simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.... The whole force of the writer's thought,--his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale.... If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the _officina_ of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street." The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him--(nay, I fear I must say my _attack_ on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy)--was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed. He passed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he rebuked my assailant for profane recklessness. I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet without asserting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all this in the first edition of his "Defence" was reviewed in a _third_ article of the "Prospective Review," Its ability and reach of thought are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects) it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new hand, "at the risk of revealing _division of persons and opinions_ within the limits of the mystic critical _We_." Who is the author, I do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more than distant intercourse with me.