provisioned, it may be added, scantily enough. Miss Nightingale continued to see Mrs. Truelove from time to time in later years; wrote to her occasionally; sent her books and various presents regularly; and in times of her husband's difficulties and (literally) trials, never withheld sympathy. [61] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860. Miss Nightingale's object, in her first expeditions to John Street, had been to discover and discuss the kind of literature affected by the more intelligent working-men. The conclusion at which she arrived was that "the most thinking and conscientious of the artizans have no religion at all."[62] She set to work, accordingly, to find a new religion for them. In this undertaking she took much counsel with one of her aunts. This was "Aunt Mai," her father's sister, Mary Shore, married to Mr. Samuel Smith, her mother's brother. A large number of her letters on religious subjects was preserved by Miss Nightingale. They show spiritual insight, and a considerable talent in speculative thought. The postscript of Miss Nightingale's letter to her father, given above, contains one of the fundamental ideas in her scheme of theology--the idea of Perfect Goodness, willing that mankind shall create mankind by man's own experience. The same idea was suggested by Aunt Mai when she wrote to her niece: "The purpose of God is to accomplish the welfare of man, not as a gift from Him, but as to be attained for each individual and for the whole race by the right exercise of the capabilities of each." [62] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860. During 1851 and 1852 aunt and niece corresponded at great length on these high matters, and by the end of the latter year Miss Nightingale had her new religion ready for the criticism of her friends. "Many thanks," she wrote (Nov. 19) to her cousin Hilary, "for your letter of corrections and annotations, all of which I have adopted. I should much like to have a regular talk with you about the Novel. I have not the least idea whether I shall have to remodel the Novel and 'Religion' entirely; for I am so sick of it that I lose all discrimination about the ensemble and the form." Her object is explained in a letter of about the same date to another friend:-- (_To R. Monckton Milnes._) I am going abroad soon. Before I go, I am thinking of asking you whether you would look over certain things which I have written for the working-men on the subject of belief in a God. All the moral and intellectual among them seem going over to atheism, or at least to a vague kind of theism. I have read them to one or two, and they have liked them. I should have liked to have asked you if you think them likely to be read by more; but you are perhaps not interested in the subject, or you have no time, which is fully taken up with other things. If you tell me this, it will be no surprise or disappointment.[63]