hv MEMOIR 



and no mistake. We go on talking till I have a picture in my 

 head, and can hardly believe at the end that the original is 

 Stowting. Even you don't know half how good mamma is ; 

 in other things too, which I must not mention. She teaches 

 me how it is not necessary to be very rich to do much good. I 

 begin to understand that mamma would find useful occupation 

 and create beauty at the bottom of a volcano. She has little 

 weaknesses, but is a real generous-hearted woman, which I 

 suppose is the finest thing in the world.' Though neither mother 

 nor son could be called beautiful, they make a pretty picture ; 

 the ugly, generous, ardent woman weaving rainbow illusions; 

 the ugly, clear-sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of 

 his rare hours of pleasure, half-beguiled, half-amused, wholly 

 admiring, as he listens. But as he goes home, and the fancy 

 pictures fade, and Stowting is once more burthened with debt, 

 and the noisy companions and the long hours of drudgery once 

 more approach, -no wonder if the dirty green seems all the 

 dirtier or if Atlas must resume his load. 



But in healthy natures, this time of moral teething passes 

 quickly of itself, and is easily alleviated by fresh interests ; and 

 already, in the letter to Frank Scott, there are two words of 

 hope : his friends in London, his love for his profession. The 

 last might have saved him ; for he was erelong to pass into a 

 new sphere, where all his faculties were to be tried and exercised, 

 and his life to be filled with interest and effort. But it was not 

 left to engineering : another and more influential aim was to be 

 set before him. He must, in any case, have fallen in love ; in 

 any case, his love would have ruled his life ; and the ques- 

 tion -of choice was, for the descendant of two such families, a 

 thing of paramount importance. Innocent of the world, fiery, 

 generous, devoted as he was, the son of the wild Jacksons and 

 the facile Jenkins might have been led far astray. By one of 

 those partialities that fill men at once with gratitude and 

 wonder, his choosing was directed well. Or are we to say 

 that by a man's choice in marriage, as by a crucial merit, he 

 deserves his fortune ? One thing at least reason may discern : 

 that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his help- 



