Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

202 LETTERS.
to notices of the press. They are so indiscriminate,
and so much done up in a spirit of trade between
publishers and editors, that they have little value.
I do not see the " Westminster Review," but I care
very little about being "respectfully cited" in it.
The same honor befalls hundreds below the level
of mediocrity. I think few things are more inconvenient and disagreeable than being a ". small " lion.
One loses the advantage of complete obscurity, without attaining to the advantages of great fame. If
what I have written has been the means of doing any
good in the world, I am thankful; but as for personal gratification in receiving, as a lion, what you
call " the homage of smaller animals," I have none.
All I want is to be left in peace to do quietly the
work which my hands find to do.
I agree with you in thinking that there are many
good things in the article, " New Chapter of Christian
Evidences," in the " Atlantic." But if Christianity
is, as the writer says, better adapted for a universal
religion than any other, is it not simply because
Christianity is an accretion of all the antecedent religious aspirations of mankind? How many rivulets
of thought had been flowing from various parts of
the world, and through continuous ages, all drawn
toward each other by the extension of the Roman
Empire! And in the midst of those gathering tides
stood Paul! He was the man, by whose agency a
Jewish reformation was widened into a world-religion.
All the world being represented in the system, it may
well be better adapted for a universal religion than
any of its component parts. But it is still receiving
accretions from present inspirations, and so it will go
on. Swedenborg has not established a." new church,'