ather more in the pure idea), began to yearn for England
long before her term of holiday exile had ended. She had been flattered
by her friend, her 'wedded martyr at the stake,' as she named him, to
believe that she could exercise a judgement in politics--could think,
even speak acutely, on public affairs. The reports of speeches delivered
by the men she knew or knew of, set her thrilling; and she fancied the
sensibility to be as independent of her sympathy with the orators as her
political notions were sovereignty above a sex devoted to trifles, and
the feelings of a woman who had gone through fire. She fancied it
confidently, notwithstanding a peculiar intuition that the plunge into
the nobler business of the world would be a haven of safety for a woman
with blood and imagination, when writing to Emma: 'Mr. Redworth's great
success in Parliament is good in itself, whatever his views of present
questions; and I do not heed them when I look to what may be done by a
man of such power in striking at unjust laws, which keep the really
numerically better-half of the population in a state of slavery. If he
had been a lawyer! It must be a lawyer's initiative--a lawyer's Bill. Mr.
Percy Dacier also spoke well, as might have been expected, and his
uncle's compliment to him was merited. Should you meet him sound him. He
has read for the Bar, and is younger than Mr. Redworth. The very young
men and the old are our hope. The middleaged are hard and fast for
existing facts. We pick our leaders on the slopes, the incline and
decline of the mountain--not on the upper table-land midway, where all
appears to men so solid, so tolerably smooth, save for a few
excrescences, roughnesses, gradually to be levelled at their leisure;
which induces one to protest that the middle-age of men is their time of
delusion. It is no paradox. They may be publicly useful in a small way. I
do not deny it at all. They must be near the gates of life--the opening
or the closing--for their minds to be accessible to the urgency of the
greater questions. Otherwise the world presents itself to them under too
settled an aspect--unless, of course, Vesuvian Revolution shakes the
land. And that touches only their nerves. I dream of some old Judge!
There is one--if having caught we could keep him. But I dread so tricksy
a pilot. You have guessed him--the ancient Puck! We have laughed all day
over the paper telling us of his worrying the Lords. Lady Esquart
congratulate