. I don't - and don't wish to - believe
in the apteryx profession; that's all I must say.
    My health has been indifferent since I last wrote. We live in all but
continuous darkness, and very seldom indeed breathe anything that can be called
air. No doubt this state of things has its effect on me. I look forwards, not to
the coming of spring, for here we shall see nothing of its beauties, but to the
month which will release us from London. I want to smell the pines again, and to
see the golden gorse in our road.
    By way of being more positive, I have read much in the newspapers,
supplementing from them my own experience of London society. The result is that
I am more and more confirmed in the fears with which I have already worried you.
Two movements are plainly going on in the life of our day. The decay of
religious belief is undermining morality, and the progress of Radicalism in
politics is working to the same end by overthrowing social distinctions.
Evidence stares one in the face from every column of the papers. Of course you
have read more or less about the recent scandal - I mean the most recent. - It
isn't the kind of thing one cares to discuss, but we can't help knowing about
it, and does it not strongly support what I say? Here is materialism sinking
into brutal immorality, and high social rank degrading itself by intimacy with
the corrupt vulgar. There are newspapers that make political capital out of
these revelations. I have read some of them, and they make me so fiercely
aristocratic that I find it hard to care anything at all even for the
humanitarian efforts of people I respect. You will tell me, I know, that this is
quite the wrong way of looking at it. But the evils are so monstrous that it is
hard to fix one's mind on the good that may long hence result from them.
    I cling to the essential (that is the spiritual) truths of Christianity as
the only absolute good left in our time. I would say that I care nothing for
forms, but some form there must be, else one's faith evaporates. It has become
very easy for me to understand how men and women who know the world refuse to
believe any longer in a directing Providence. A week ago I again met Miss Moxey
at the Walworths', and talked with her more freely than before. This
conversation showed me that I have become much more tolerant towards
individuals. But though this or
