I845-] 



DR. MARTINEAU. 



79 



shall be quite as happy as is good for me, and I am generally 

 most at peace when I am not happy. ... I am quite sorry 

 to have been so selfish, and taken up so much of your time 

 and thought with my own affairs; but I felt that it did not 

 concern me alone, else I should not have done it, and my con- 

 versation with you did more to settle my mind, and to remove 

 objections from Warrington, than anything else; and I now 

 look forward with extreme delight to being so near you. My 

 interview with the children seems to have given me a new, 

 fresh life, and they come like guardian angels to me, when I 

 am tempted to despond. My best love to them." 



Miss M. E. Martineau (July n, 1877) thus describes the 

 impression that he made on her : " I was deeply touched by 

 the news of your brother's death, and it seemed to bring back 

 to me all that early time, when he used to come and stay with 

 us, and so won all our hearts, that, at least with the elder ones 

 of us, he has kept his place there ever since, in spite of years 

 of separation. There was something in his presence and in his 

 character that made him a delightful companion to children, 

 and at the same time gave him a powerful influence over 

 them for good. It seems to me that he stood in a peculiar 

 relation to us children, — half playfellow and half elder friend \ 

 but somehow he so threw himself into our life, and made him- 

 self so much like one of ourselves, that we almost forgot to 

 think of him as a man; and he certainly encouraged our 

 familiarity, for he would not let us call him anything but 

 4 Philip/ Looking back on our intercourse with him, it seems 

 to me one of the brightest spots in our happy early life. I 

 think he had that most happy power of drawing out the best in 

 children's minds and dispositions, which belongs only to such 

 a pure and simple character as his ; and he entered with such 

 sympathy into our tastes and pursuits, as to encourage all that 

 was good in these, and give a fresh impulse to them. I 

 remember this especially in relation to Russell's study of shells 

 — to which I think your brother gave the first impulse, or, at any 

 rate, the greatest help and encouragement. His love for my 

 brother Herbert was most remarkable, and I am sure Herbert 



