Correspondence

1898.  EBB to Richard Hengist Horne

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 185.

[London]

[ca. May 1845] [1]

<***> I liked your child’s book, and recognised in it, every here and there, some divine faint starlight from “Orion.” But there is one great omission. There is a sense of God in the mind of every child, and to this you do not respond. Doctrinal instruction is out of the question; but the sense of God, that instinctive aspiration of the child’s mind, should not be met with silence and vacancy in the mind of the teacher. Now there is my sermon and criticism for you, both in one, if you will accept them so. <***>

Text: EBB-RHH, II, 164–165.

1. Dated by internal references to Horne’s “child’s book” and his return to England from Germany (see letter 1880).

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