^'T. 69.] 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 circum- 

 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 

 talkative. 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 



