[467]
absolutely demanded either by charity or business.
The proof that you still think of me affectionately is very welcome now it has come, and more cheering because it enables me to think of you as enjoying your retreat in your orange orchard,--your western Sorrento --the beloved rabbi still beside you. I am sure it must be a great blessing to you to bathe in that quietude, as it always is to us when we go out of reach of London influences and have the large space of country days to study, walk, and talk in ....
When I am more at liberty I will certainly read Mr. Owen's books, if he is good enough to send them to me. I desire on all subjects to keep an open mind, but hitherto the various phenomena, reported or attested in connection with ideas of spirit intercourse and so on, have come before me here in the painful form of the lowest charlatanerie ....
But apart from personal contact with people who get money by public exhibitions as mediums, or with semiidiots such as those who make a court for a Mrs. —, or other feminine personages of that kind, I would not willingly place any barriers between my mind and any possible channel of truth affecting the human lot. The spirit in which you have written in the paper you kindly sent me is likely to touch others, and arouse them at least to attention in a case where you have been deeply impressed . .
Yours with sincere affection, M. L. Lewes.
