"We talked with open heart and tongue, Affectionate and free-- A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-three." I have stated a second reason for this record, in the fact that Mr. Clowes was the first of my friends who had any connexion with the press. At one time I have reason to believe that this connexion was pretty extensive, though not publicly avowed, and so far from being lucrative that at first I believe it to have been expensive to him, and whatever profits might afterwards arise were applied, as much of his regular income, to the benefit of others.[23] Here, again, it seems surprising that a spirit so beneficent and, in the amplest sense, charitable, could coalesce in any views with Swedenborg, who, in some senses, was not charitable. Swedenborg had been scandalized by a notion which, it seems, he found prevalent amongst the poor of the Continent--viz., that, if riches were a drag and a negative force on the road to religious perfection, poverty must be positive title _per se_ to the favour of Heaven. Grievously offended with this error, he came almost to hate poverty as a presumptive indication of this offensive heresy; scarcely would he allow it an indirect value, as removing in many cases the occasions or incitements of evil. No: being in itself neutral and indifferent, he argued that it had become erroneously a ground of presumptuous hope; whilst the rich man, aware of his danger, was, in some degree, armed against it by fear and humility. And, in this course of arguing and of corresponding feeling, Mr. Swedenborg had come to hate the very name of a poor candidate for Heaven, as bitterly as a sharking attorney hates the applications of a pauper client. Yet so entirely is it true that "to the pure, all things are pure," and that perfect charity "thinketh no ill," but is gifted with a power to transmute all things into its own resemblance--so entirely is all this true, that this most spiritual, and, as it were, disembodied of men, could find delight in the dreams of the very "fleshliest incubus" that has intruded amongst heavenly objects; and, secondly, this benignest of men found his own pure feelings not outraged by one who threw a withering scowl over the far larger half of his fellow-creatures. [23] In a recent [1889] catalogue of a Manchester book-sale I find this entry:--"Clowes (John, of Manchester, the Church of England Swedenborgian). Sermons, Translations, etc., with a Life of him by Theo. Crompton, principally published in Manchester from 1799 to 1850. 17 vols."--M. * * * * *