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320 to show us that our images are senseless, hideous daubs of clay, instead of the immortal gods we had taken them for; and so shame us into putting them aside, of our own free-will. She evinces none of that animosity toward religionists or the clergy which is, unhappily, too often a trait of those who dissent from the doctrines and dogmas of orthodoxy. For the clergy, indeed, she shows often a tender, reverent feeling of pity, as toward a misunderstood, much-abused class of men, rather than any disposition to brand them as willful hypocrites, and wolves in sheep's clothing. She aims ever to show the folly and weakness of the belief, instead of the sins and shortcomings of the believers.

What a writer says of Mr. Lewes is equally true of his wife, viz. “that he is a thorough skeptic and disputer of the supernatural; and we have little doubt that he has done more than any other two men living in his time in England to diffuse skepticism—especially among the refined and