But profound as is my own moral respect and admiration, for a _vacation_ give me the Continent! The civilization here is too heavy, too _stodgy_, if one could use so unamiable a word. The very stability and good-nature of all things (of course we are leaving out the slum-life!) rest on the basis of the national stupidity, or rather unintellectuality, on which as on a safe foundation of non-explosible material, the magnificent minds of the élite of the race can coruscate as they will, safely. Not until those weeks at Oxford, and these days at Durham, have I had any sense of what a part the Church plays in the national life. So massive and all-pervasive, so authoritative, and on the whole so decent, in spite of the iniquity and farcicality of the whole thing. Never were incompatibles so happily yoked together. Talk about the genius of Romanism! It's nothing to the genius of Anglicanism, for Catholicism still contains some haggard elements, that ally it with the Palestinian desert, whereas Anglicanism remains obese and round and comfortable and decent with this world's decencies, without an _acute_ note in its whole life or history, in spite of the shrill Jewish words on which its ears are fed, and the nitro-glycerine of the Gospels and Epistles which has been injected into its veins. Strange feat to have achieved! Yet the success is great--the whole Church-machine makes for all sorts of graces and decencies, and is not incompatible with a high type of Churchman, high, that is, on the side of moral and worldly virtue.... How I wish you were beside me at this moment! A breeze has arisen on the Lake which is spread out before the "smoking-room" window at which I write, and is very grateful. The lake much resembles Lake George. Your ever grateful and loving W. J. _To Charles Eliot Norton._ PATTERDALE, ENGLAND, _July 6, 1908_.