ON STANDING SPONSOE 59 



glory and set up in England as a tutor, abandoning his title 

 and mitre. I have seen a good deal of him, and consider him 

 sanguine and unsafe. 



His attitude towards the ceremonies of the Church is illus- 

 trated by a letter to Huxley, who had asked him to be godfather 

 to his son, at his wife's desire, though to himself it was an 

 unmeaning form only to be turned into ' a reality by making it 

 a bond with one's friends.' ' If,' he adds, ' you have any objec- 

 tions to say ' all this I steadfastly believe,' even by deputy, I 

 know you will have no hesitation in saying so.' 



Kew : January 4, 1861. 



MY DEAR HUXLEY, I will volontiers ' renounce the 

 Devil and all his works ' for your child, in spirit, and chasser 

 his majesty in person from his cradle and bed whenever and 

 wherever I am called upon to do so. Nay more I will do 

 it ' by bell and by book,' for he shall have a coral when his 

 blessed teeth be coming and a book when he can read it. 

 Also as the christening is to be done, it is a duty to see it 

 done properly; ' devoutly, orderly and reverently,' and as 

 I won't trust these parsons, I will go see it myself. In the 

 abstract I hate and despise the spiritual element of the 

 ceremony, but in practice I do not care so much about it as 

 conscientiously to plead any honest wish to shirk it. I have 

 a greater objection to say ' all this I steadfastly believe ' 

 by deputy, than in person. I have a conflicting opinions as 

 to the expediency &c. of doing things by halves, but only one 

 as to the propriety of being hung for a sheep in preference to 

 a lamb, and as I have had hitherto, and yet shall have, to 

 go to Church with other people's bairns, I should be ashamed 

 to decline to do so with yours. I assure you truthfully that 

 the pleasure of being in any recognised relationship to your 

 child will sweeten any pill of doctrine that may be offered, even 

 if I could not manage to ' sham Abraham ' at the responses, 

 an unworthy and cowardly resort I affect on such occasions. 



Under his critical distrust, however, of theologians and 

 sacerdotalism generally, he was deeply responsive to the 

 deep things of the spirit which move humanity in life and 

 in death. Characteristic in their different ways are letters 



