I see
nowhere more often than in authors the truth that men love their
opposites. Dickens insists on being tragic and makes shipwreck.
I always thought (forgive me) that the Hebrew parts of "Dred" were a
mistake. Do not think me impertinent; I am only honestly anxious that
what I consider a very remarkable genius should have faith in itself.
Let your moral take care of itself, and remember that an author's
writing-desk is something infinitely higher than a pulpit. What I call
"care of itself" is shown in that noble passage in the February number
about the ladder up to heaven. That is grand preaching and in the
right way. I am sure that "The Minister's Wooing" is going to be the
best of your products hitherto, and I am sure of it because you show
so thorough a mastery of your material, so true a perception of
realities, without which the ideality is impossible.
As for "orthodoxy," be at ease. Whatever is well done the world finds
orthodox at last, in spite of all the Fakir journals, whose only
notion of orthodoxy seems to be the power of standing in one position
till you lose all the use of your limbs. If, with your heart and
brain, _you_ are not orthodox, in Heaven's name who is? If you
mean "Calvinistic," no woman could ever be such, for Calvinism is
logic, and no woman worth the name could ever live by syllogisms.
Woman charms a higher faculty in us than reason, God be praised, and
nothing has delighted me more in your new story than the happy
instinct with which you develop this incapacity of the lovers' logic
in your female characters.
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