Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/193

 THE PIETIST

" cutting it is to be the means of bringing children into the world to be the subjects of the Kingdom of Darkness, to dwell with Divils and Damned Spirits."

In this temper of pardonable regret the mother of William Godwin wrote to her erring son; and while the maternal point of view deserves consideration (no parent could be expected to relish such a prospect), the letter is noteworthy as being one of the few written to Godwin, or about Godwin, which forces us to sympathize with the philosopher. The boy who was reproved for picking up the family cat on Sunday—"demeaning myself with such profaneness on the Lord's day"—was little likely to find his religion "all pure profit." His account of the books he read as a child, and of his precocious and unctuous piety, is probably over-emphasized for the sake of colour; but the