Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th April, 1850.
Have you any engagement for the week after next? If not, may I join you on Saturday the 4th, and invite M. d'Albert to come down on the following Monday? It appears he cannot stay in England longer than until about the second week in May. I am uncomfortable at the idea of burdening even your friendship with the entertainment of a person purely for my sake. It is indeed the greatest of all the great kindnesses you have shown me. Write me two or three kind words, dear Cara. I have been so ill at ease ever since I have been in England that I am quite discouraged. Dear Chrissey is generous and sympathizing, and really cares for my happiness.
Rosehill.
On the 4th of May Miss Evans went to Rosehill, and on the 7th M. d'Albert joined the party for a three days' visit. The strong affection existing between Mr. and Mrs. Bray and their guest, and the more congenial intellectual atmosphere surrounding them, led Miss Evans to make her home practically at Rosehill for the next sixteen months. She stayed there continuously till the 18th November, and, among other things, wrote a review of Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect." In October Mr. Mackay and Mr. Chapman, the editor of the Westminster Review, came to stay at Rosehill, and there was probably some talk then about her assisting in the editorial work of the Review, but it was not until the following spring that any definite understanding on this subject was arrived at. Meantime the article on Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" came out in the January, 1851, number of the Westminster. It contains the following remarkable passages:
"Our civilization, and yet more, our religion, are an anomalous blending of lifeless barbarisms, which have descended to us like so many petrifactions from distant ages, with living ideas, the offspring of a true process of development. We are in bondage to terms and conceptions, which, having had their roots in conditions of thought no longer existing, have ceased to possess any vitality, and are for us as spells which have lost their virtue. The endeavor to spread enlightened ideas is perpetually counteracted by these idola theatri, which have allied themselves, on the one hand, with men's better sentiments, and, on the other, with institutions in whose defence are arrayed the passions and the interests of dominant classes. Now, although the teaching of positive truth is the grand means of expelling error, the process will be very much quickened if the negative argument serve as its pioneer; if, by a survey of the past, it can be shown how each age and each race has had a faith and a symbolism suited to its need and its stage of development, and that for succeeding ages to dream of retaining the spirit, along with the forms, of the past, is as futile as the embalming of the dead body in the hope that it may one day be resumed by the living soul.... It is Mr. Mackay's faith that divine revelation is not contained exclusively or pre-eminently in the facts and inspirations of any one age or nation, but is coextensive with the history of human development, and is perpetually unfolding itself to our widened experience and investigation, as firmament upon firmament becomes visible to us in proportion to the power and range of our exploring-instruments. The master-key to this revelation is the recognition of the presence of undeviating law in the material and moral world—of that invariability of sequence which is acknowledged to be the basis of physical science, but which is still perversely ignored in our social organization, our ethics, and our religion. It is this invariability of sequence which can alone give value to experience, and render education, in the true sense, possible. The divine yea and nay, the seal of prohibition and of sanction, are effectually impressed on human deeds and aspirations, not by means of Greek and Hebrew, but by that inexorable law of consequences whose evidence is confirmed instead of weakened as the ages advance; and human duty is comprised in the earnest study of this law and patient obedience to its teaching. While this belief sheds a bright beam of promise on the future career of our race, it lights up what once seemed the dreariest region of history with new interest; every past phase of human development is part of that education of the race in which we are sharing; every mistake, every absurdity, into which poor human nature has fallen, may be looked on as an experiment of which we may reap the benefit. A correct generalization gives significance to the smallest detail, just as the great inductions of geology demonstrate in every pebble the working of laws by which the earth has become adapted for the habitation of man. In this view religion and philosophy are not merely conciliated, they are identical; or, rather, religion is the crown and consummation of philosophy—the delicate corolla which can only spread out its petals in all their symmetry and brilliance to the sun when root and branch exhibit the conditions of a healthy and vigorous life."
Miss Evans seems to have been in London from the beginning of January till the end of March, 1851; and Mr. Chapman made another fortnight's visit to Rosehill at the end of May and beginning of June. It was during this period that, with Miss Evans's assistance, the prospectus of the new series of the Westminster Review was determined on and put in shape. At the end of July she went with Mrs. Bray to visit Mr. and Mrs. Robert Noel, at Bishop Steignton, in Devonshire. Mrs. Bray had some slight illness there, and Miss Evans writes:
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Aug. 1851.
I am grieved indeed if anything might have been written, which has not been written, to allay your anxiety about Cara. Her letter yesterday explained what has been the matter. I knew her own handwriting would be pleasanter to you than any other. I have been talking to her this morning about the going to London or to Rosehill. She seems to prefer London. A glance or two at the Exposition, she thinks, would do her no harm. To-day we are all going to Teignmouth. She seems to like the idea of sitting by the waves. The sun is shining gloriously, and all things are tolerably promising. I am going to walk on before the rest and have a bath.