Autograph letter signed : London, to William Angus Knight, 1872 June 16.

Expressing his disappointment that Knight was not at Portland Street "that Sunday morning; saying "The sermon resumed in the most happy way the various points mooted during the week of meetings, and carried them all up into a region where one felt all the [illegible] of conflicting opinion hushed in the presence of the transcendant [sic] realities of faith - Mr. Brooke interested me deeply: & I was especially struck with the emphasis with which he dwelt on the separateness of Wordsworth's view of nature: he did not view the world as simply a reflection of his own moods and could never have written anything so 'morbid' as Tennyson's 'calm is the morn without a sound' &c. He said that in some respects the religion of nature was the highest of all, as it was wholly free from any reference to self: 'a man might know God in his own heart as Father, as Redeemer, as Comforter; but that was not all, no, nor even half; he knew nothing of Him as the glory of sublimity, as the glory of beauty, as the glory of order, as the glory of morality;" discussing Martineau's two recent sermons and the concepts of 'The Absolute & the Perfect' which "...must surely remain unknowable to our finite intelligences: i.e., its existence is, I suppose, within our apprehension, but it must be quite beyond us to enumerate its contents. - But this cannot be discussed in two words - & it connects itself with a conversation I had recently with my father, on a pretty ontological puzzle, hopelessly beyond my solution. I will seek your advice on it bye & bye;" discussing a photo of Huxley he is trying to obtain for Knight; adding that he would love to see him if he passes through Leeds saying "They whose homes are solitary, know how to value the company of a friend."