Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/34

 8 first contact with free unbiassed inquiry. It is easy to say that this would not have happened if the Bible had been taught her rationally; and such may indeed be the case. But the problem of reconciling the mature and the earnest teacher's desire to impart the truth with the tenderness due to the innate trust and reverence of a young mind, is a most difficult one, and it is to be wished that some of the thought bestowed on less important matters were given to its solution.

Mathilde quickly found inquiry synonymous with martyrdom, and, hard as the saying seems, it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise. The inquiries, which, though no doubt they might with advantage have been deferred to a later period of her career, were merely representatives of a phase through which every thinking young person had passed, was passing, or would pass, produced results comparable in a small way with Shelley's expulsion from the University of Oxford. Her researches and her conclusions having come to light, the question was plainly put to her, would she give up her heretical opinions? Upon conviction, yes; upon compulsion, no. Her school training and her school friendships consequently came to an end, and she had, m a sense, to begin the world again. An expressive gap in her autobiography eloquently speaks the intensity of her anguish. When the curtain is raised again, we find her at Zurich, in the house of her maternal uncle, Mr. Ries, at the end of 1859. She undertook a walking tour through the lonely parts of Switzerland by herself, a very unusual feat at that time; but her great and keen enjoyment of the wildest aspects of nature fully compensated her for the unavoidable difficulties so young and inexperienced a traveller was almost certain to encounter. On one occasion she found it necessary to instil respect