Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

Selccttons frtom tbet Ietters
essay on Spinoza. His doctrines have a great fascination for me; for I owe to them, and other similar
works, whatever of peace and repose I may enjoy.
"We cannot fear when nothing can befall us except
what God wishes, and we shall not violently hope
when the future, whatever it be, will be the best
which is possible."...
Believe me, sincerely yours, A. C. L. B.
NEW-YORK,, 1878.
My dear Mr. Froude: I do not share your fearofthe
spread of Catholicism in the country. Perhaps because I do not fear anything. As for going over to
the Catholic Church, I am in one sense already over,
since I was baptized in it as an infant, to gratify some
friends of my father. When I reach my second
childhood, I cannot now say what I shall do; but in
the present condition of my mental faculties, while
I can study nature, which Goethe calls "The freshly
uttered word of God," and while I can observe, even
as imperfectly as I do, the wonderful developments
of modern science, there is little danger of my turning back to the cloisters of the middle ages, or to the
childish superstitions that have come down from
them. You, surely, are the priest of a new religion,
though you may not know it. I think with you that
we should not grudge to our fellow-creatures any belief in which they find consolation and hope. We
all have our illusions of one kind or another; life
would be impossible without them, though they may
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