"'Isis,' I suppose I am to call you, since you have renounced your Christian name, and taken one instead which I can find only in the heathen mythology. I have received both your letters, and indeed in a form which I should least of all have expected, and least of all wished for any member of our reputable and respectable, but always retiring and obscure family. You are the first one that ever had the ambition to appear before the public, and I must confess that that ambition, extraordinary as it is, appears under circumstances that raise it above all suspicion of the influences which are the ordinary incentives to ambition. It cannot be any ordinary pursuit of riches, nor any very particular regard to reputation that has placed my sister in a situation of such peculiar attachment to an individual whom the law of his country has-placed in a gaol.
"But as I am no philosopher, as you profess to be, and therefore unable to judge of things (as you would) save as they really are, I am obliged to confine my judgment to the nature of things as they appear to be, and as the judgments of society are necessarily governed by appearances, we surely claim too much from society when we expect its good opinions and its bestowal of confidence, without paying the compliment of our attention and regard to appearances. An authority which you ever respected, and which our dear departed father would have us both to respect through life, has counselled us: Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there is any praise think on these things. And this, I presume, would have been no counsel to regulate young women's deportment in society, even though she had come to discover that the faith in which her father lived in virtue, and died in hope, was a mere being, held bound or tied fast to a system, a dogma, a ceremony, a discipline. But at the distance to which you have pleased to remove yourself from us, a distance I fear greater than miles can measure, we, your religious family, have no means of judging of your conduct but by report, and it is with an aching heart that I find that the frightful corroboration of your own report against yourself. In your first letter, which I read in print in the Isis No. 34, purporting to be edited by a lady, and that lady to be my sister Eliza, you are pleased to expose to the world what certainly the world could have as little curiosity to know as I had inclination to discover, and it is hardly making me amends to publish at the same time the uncalled for acknowledgment that you were a young woman when I, you say (and I thank you, madam, for the advertisement), who am calculating on some early settlement for future life, 'was yet a child'. I am willing to give you as much honor as you would wish for the advantage you have over me in the point of age, though there is a sort of heroism in the extraordinary virtue of a young lady telling the world that she is in the view of thirty, which other young ladies of the same age would feel more disposed to admire than to imitate. But that advantage of quite sufficiently advanced age, on the score of which you are fully authorised to be the instructress, example, and guide of your sister at one and twenty, like all other advantages, involves a corresponding accountability, and gives the world a right to expect and to understand that a lady of such an age does not play with language with the unwary simplicity of a 'Miss in her teens', nor bandy sentences of a construction which may bear meanings to other minds of which her own was unconscious. The composition of a woman of thirty will never be interpreted according to the simplicity of a girl of fifteen. In the stationary and the staid condition in which our father left us, and left us with his best wishes and prayers that we might continue steadfast even to the end, you will not wonder that I should have consulted our minister, the Rev. H. T., in this great calamity, to me, of receiving two letters in print of such a nature as those in Nos. 34 and 35 of the Isis. I thank you for the admission that our minister (for so he was once, and I hope he will be again, both yours and mine) is an amiable man, and that you know he is amiable. Your good opinion of him to that extent would not have been lessened could you but have witnessed with what a generosity of soul he received and read the new sort of questions which a wandering member of his congregation had propounded to him. A sort of questioning, indeed, from which the character of Mr. T.'s suggestive influence is written as with a sunbeam. You bid me examines his motives. Well, my dear sister, well, the advice which you give to me is transcendently well. It is a wise, a discreet, a becoming caution in us young women to examine men's motives, especially ere we take them into such places in our confidence as none but a father could or ought to be. I have examined his motives, and to do so effectually I took the plan of doing so rationally, that is, I contented myself with examining those of his motives which came within my extent of power to examine, without going beyond my powers to examine, and which could be known to God only; and as far as humanity, I could find no motive for the advice I received from him of a less holy character than the motives which would have governed the counsels of a dying parent. Eliza, our minister was moved with sorrow for the inferior repute into which your conduct has brought our respectable family. What could be the corrupt motive for bringing upon us so much sorrow? For though you might choose to maintain that your conduct was that of an angel, you could not deny it was of evil repute, and to have been of a family of good repute and to see it fallen and cast down into most vile suspicion, and however your philosophy may enable you to set it at defiance, is to my feelings a very great calamity. For though you are very clever and have become so all of a sudden, yet I, your poor sister, feeling only as common people feel, and thinking only, I confess, as I have been taught to think, cannot help thinking what would our father have said? Would Eliza have turned Pagan had he lived? You say that the purity of my mind would revolt at the first idea of idolatry, as you have done. But how came you not to revolt at the last idea of idolatry, or having revolted at the first, to come at last to such a peace with that you first revolted at as to renounce your Christian name for that of an Egyptian idol; and not content with taking the name of Isis, to take her character too, and let all the world see that Isis could do nothing without her Osiris—'her friend, her comforter, her priest, her saviour and her God'? They are your own words, my sister, and I pray God to forgive you their import, whatever it may be. I hope I do not understand them. You ask me in your first letter 'Will the Rev. Mr. T. bear a 'critical question?' Alack, my dear Eliza, what is it but my sister's love and duty that hinders her from putting a critical question to you? But with a sister's love and a sister's prayer I commend the question to your own bosom, which I long to press to mine; and I bid you adieu, not in the new-fangled meaning which no one ever heard of before, but in the sense of its common acceptance to God. And to God I commend you with the utmost sincerity of soul, as no fear of infidel rebuke shall ever hinder me from saying, 'through Jesus Christ our Lord '.
"Maria Sharples."
This not unworthy letter of itself throws no discredit on the writer, but the postscript attached to it carries a sting which undoes the very good impression the letter itself makes, which in justice to the writer, as well as to the recipient, is withheld, as it only shows that the religious ossification of the heart had set in even at the premature age of 21. Another curious circumstance in regard to this sister's letter is, that it is in the Rev. Robert Taylor's handwriting. The only explanation for this is that Isis may have sent it to Carlile, and he in turn sent it to Taylor, in prison, for his perusal, as their daily correspondence shows them to be in the habit of doing, i.e. exchanging everything that may have been of interest at the moment. Taylor must have copied it, with what object we are at a loss to discover. We find it in a collection of Taylor's own letters.
We left Carlile and Isis exchanging confidence and making arrangement for a permanent and mutually satisfactory partnership of marriage as well as of business. It was not, however, thought wise to make a public declaration of their union till Carlile's term of imprisonment had expired.
Richard Carlile to Isis.
"What shall I do to be saved? was never more earnestly felt than a feeling of mine at present which says: 'what shall I do to restore happiness to her whom I love and whom I have wounded?' As I began an intended long letter just now, Mrs. and Miss Henderson came about six o'clock. They waited until eight for Master Cooper, and left thinking he would not come. They had not left above a quarter of an hour before he and his father came. I wish you would come to breakfast with me to-morrow and have my atonement for the injury I have done you. I cannot write more to-night as my messenger whistles his visit."
"I did, love, indignantly say to Mr. League, do you think Miss Sharples is hiding herself? She is at my house, at her own house, indeed. I told him that his conduct was insolent and unbecoming him, that it was persecution, of which I had encountered enough to know how to deal with it, and that I should deal with it; I did not spare him, but treated him as he was—a low scoundrel. I shall write and tell him that you will visit me as usual to-morrow, and that he will refuse you admission at his peril. Mr. Paine and I are friends. I think it was the whispering of something of the kind that alarmed Mr. Paine and made him uneasy. I am very hungry waiting for my dinner. You shall have the receipts. I think you had better print 250 more Gauntlets. There is no other way of increasing the circulation than to meet all demands. This ten pound note must go to the landlord. I shall have another from Edinburgh in a day or two. Copeland is gone to the East for me. Cannot David get the paper from Shelding and Hodges?"
"If you were to complain to me of an insult from Richard, I should forbid him the house; but, love, I do not think it lessens you, but think it very much heightens the public view of your standing with me to see my boys about you. It shows that your ground is moral and good. If Mrs. Carlile did not feel this, she would never consent to the boys sleeping there or being there, and there is no more danger of your being undermined in my love, esteem, affection, and good opinion by any member of my family than there is of my taking back Mrs-Carlile, than which I had rather shorten my life. Such are my feelings on the subject, that I shall never shrink from meeting Mrs. Carlile anywhere in your company, nor from meeting the boys, nor from proposing to take either of the boys out with us, or to ask them to dine. In every respect I shall treat you as if there were no other Mrs. Carlile, and as if you were my lawful as well as my good wife. I fear nothing about you but your own temper, you own susceptibilities, which, though in some degree admirable, are very apt to be carried beyond the verge of reason and justice for the moment. I will always endeavor to set you a good example to rise above you in character and temper and goodness if I can. From me you shall never receive injustice, from no one will I bear it patiently. Now, love, I pray you, if you have written me any unpleasant letter to throw it in the fire. It will only spoil my working and make me unhappy. Why should you do it?
"I consider David France has done wonders for me since he has been in town, and notwithstanding that I intend much alteration in the management of the shop-when I come out."