s well satisfied with my choice of an occupation in life as ever.
Mine has its anxieties, and _desagremens_, as others have: but I am
convinced I could not have chosen better. You saw, when you were with
me, something of the anxiety of responsibility; what it is, for
instance, to await the one or the other event of a desperate case: and
I could tell you a good deal that you do not and cannot know of the
perils, and troubles attendant upon being the depository of so much
domestic and personal confidence as my function imposes upon me the
necessity of receiving. I sometimes long to be able to see nothing
but what is apparent to all in society; to perceive what is
ostensible, and to dream of nothing more,--not exactly like children,
but like the members of large and happy families, who carry about with
them the purity and peace of their homes, and therefore take
cognisance of the pure and peaceful only whom they meet abroad; but it
is childish, or indolent, or cowardly, to desire this. While there is
private vice and wretchedness, and domestic misunderstanding, one
would desire to know it, if one can do anything to cure or alleviate
it. Dr Levitt and I have the same feeling about this; and I
sometimes hope that we mutually prepare for and aid each other's work.
There is a bright side to our business, as I need not tell you. The
mere exercise of our respective professions, the scientific as well as
the moral interest of them, is as much to us as the theory of your
business to you; and that is saying a great deal. You will not
quarrel with the idea of the scientific interest of Dr Levitt's
profession in his hands; for you know how learned he is in the complex
science of Humanity. You remember the eternal wonder of the Greys at
his liberality towards dissenters. Of that liberality he is
unconscious: as it is the natural, the inevitable result of his
knowledge of men,--of his having been `hunting the waterfalls' from
his youth up,--following up thought and prejudice to their fountains.
When I see him bland and gay amongst us, I feel pretty confident that
his greatest pleasure is the same as mine,--that of reposing in the
society of the innocent, the single-hearted, the unburdened, after
having seen what the dark corners of social life are. It is like
coming out of a foetid cave into the evening sunshine. Of late, we
have felt this in an extraordinary