XXV111 LIFE OF DTI. ROLLESTON. 



child's necessities may occasionally clash. What a rare event 

 the acquisition of a new notion must be however to the working 

 classes with their dull grey life. Their minds are as unused 

 to it as their stomachs to turtle, and are as little able to bear 

 with it. But among my own friends I can count several men 

 of great acquirements and education in the past who have 

 reached the happy stage of finality and never take in any new 

 notion whatever. It seems to be a painful process to them — 

 even the very attempt to do so. This is a Whig state of mind, 

 and while it is to be found in the upper, what are we to expect 

 in the lower classes of life? However, after all, even the 

 exercise of my powers of persuasion as distinguished from those 

 of prescription is attended with pleasure, except in the case 

 of the Irish, whom I have long learnt to consider as unamenable 

 to reason or indeed anything else.' A few weeks later he con- 

 tinues, ' For my own part, I am working at my Children . . . 

 They are very interesting in many ways, having first of all 

 less of the tarnish and soil which longer life in this world never 

 fails to smear over us, and secondly having the claims to pity 

 which in addition to those which all sick folk have, they possess, 

 as suffering without having brought their suffering on their 

 own heads by their own fault. The people I object to are 

 husbands; their cruelty and savagery are very great obstacles 

 even to the bodily health of their children, and are totally 

 destructive of everything else of a higher kind. But this I do 

 not see so often as I see self-denial and exertion on the part 

 of the wife, indeed these qualities are called for whenever the 

 husband is of the above kind, and on many other occasions also. 

 Every now and then I find women taking care of children 

 whose mothers cannot, from disease or poverty, though they 

 themselves are only one grade better off. This is most pleasing, 

 as proving the existence of real goodness, as poverty allows of 

 no luxury, not even of the luxury of doing good. Supporting 

 and feeding another person's child gratis is something for people 

 to do who buy fresh meat three times a week, and their tea and 

 sugar by the quarter-pound.' This letter is dated 13 Henrietta 



