xT. 59.] TO R. W. CHURCH. | 605 
selves so. Probably nearly every one of middle age 
was born in Ireland, and would have been a peasant 
laborer at home, very likely ill-conditioned enough. 
They were, however, in holiday attire ; still they were 
fair representatives of the race, and I wished we could 
send them over to you for a day, as specimens of what 
may be made out of such material, under cireum- 
stances, not altogether the best, but much better than 
those at home. They are not the best element of our 
population, certainly, but they make by no means a 
bad lower stratum, out of which many show a truly 
Yankee-like aptitude for rising. They are almost all 
Romanists, to be sure; and there is an element of 
danger. But the influence of the priesthood is much 
tempered (as witness how they ran into Fenianism, 
against their exhortations) and in most respects is far 
from bad. The Germans are counted as a much 
better population, but they are quite as clannish, and 
in the towns are rather disposed to be actively anti- 
Christian. 
By the way, I met some time ago Mr. Stanley, 
who has been in the country before; is now on his 
way round the world via California, a favorite route. 
He is, or was, an M. P., a son of Lord Stanley of 
Alderley, an Oxford man, bright, sharp, and very 
ative. He is a specimen of ultra-secularistic 
liberalism, I should think, of a set that will be apt to 
give you some trouble hereafter, in the questions that 
are to come up; if I do not misjudge him, one who 
thinks the world, or at least England, has not much 
farther use for distinctive Christianity ; just one of the 
sort you must have had in view, in yours of February 
4, as extremely generous “in making free with what 
other people value, and you don’t care for.” Most 
