306 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xxi 



DOWN, July 19, 1895. 



R.'s hopeful note and another from Leo l still more 

 hopeful, made me quite easy. Mrs Goude and Matheson 

 have got a flag half made. Matheson said it would be 

 bad luck to finish it before the Election was declared. 

 Anne [the village shop] furnishes the materials gratis. . . . 



1.30 just received the bad news how flat ! I have hardly 

 the heart to go on with the map. I trust the first object of 

 the Government will be to get rid of the twenty extra Irish 

 Members. . . . 



This autumn for some temporary reason she had " a 

 stolid businesslike-looking pupil teacher who will not be a 

 bit shy ' ' to read aloud to her. 



Oct. 1895. 



My reader is a great success. It is Granford, and " D n 

 Dr Johnson ' comes in. She stopped dead and said " a 

 slang expression." I can't perceive she is ever amused. 

 I am stuck in Balfour. 2 His argument about the un- 

 certainty of sight seems so feeble to me that I think I can't 

 understand it. What I do understand makes me think 

 less of his good sense. 



Oct. ISth, 1895. 



I have finished Balfour. Of course I don't do the book 

 justice, but the last two or three pages seem to me very 

 inconclusive. I can agree with him that the belief in a 

 God who cares, is an immense safeguard for morality; but 

 I do not see that the doctrine of the Atonement is any 

 additional safeguard yes, I do see it partly. Also I am 

 surprised at his considering that morality is impossible 

 without some religion, which he gives as an axiom not to 

 be disputed. I quite agree that the remains of Christian 

 feeling make us unable to judge of the present race of 

 agnostics. 



1 Leonard Darwin was standing again for Liclifield and was defeated. 



2 The Foundations of Belief , by A. J. Balfour. 



