f John and Edward
Romilly, 'they had virtuous projects,' she says, 'and had every hope of
achieving service worthy of their father's fame; but their aspirations
were speedily tamed down--as all high aspirations _are_ lowered by Whig
influences.' A certain peer is described as 'agreeable enough in society
to those who are not very particular in regard to sincerity; and was, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer or anything else, as good a representative
as could be found of the flippancy, conceit, and official helplessness
and ignorance of the Whig administration.' Charles Knight started a new
periodical for the people under the patronage of the official Whigs.
'But the poverty and perverseness of their ideas, and the insolence of
their feelings, were precisely what might be expected by all who really
knew that remarkably vulgar class of men. They purposed to lecture the
working classes, who were by far the wiser party of the two, in a
jejune, coaxing, dull, religious-tract sort of tone, and criticised and
deprecated everything like vigour, and a manly and genial tone of
address in the new publication, while trying to push in as contributors
effete and exhausted writers and friends of their own, who knew about
as much of the working classes of England as of those of Turkey.' This
energetic description, which belongs to the year 1848, gives us an
interesting measure of the distance that has been traversed during the
last thirty years. The workmen have acquired direct political power;
they have organised themselves into effective groups for industrial
purposes; they have produced leaders of ability and sound judgment; and
the Whig who seeks their support must stoop or rise to talk a Radicalism
that would have amply satisfied even Harriet Martineau herself.

The source of this improvement in the society to which she bade
farewell, over that into which she had been born, is set down by Miss
Martineau to the most remarkable literary genius with whom, during her
residence in London, she was brought into contact. 'What Wordsworth did
for poetry,' she says, 'in bringing us out of a conventional idea and
method to a true and simple one, Carlyle has done for morality. He may
be himself the most curious opposition to himself--he may be the
greatest mannerist of his age while denouncing conventionalism--the
greatest talker while eulogising silence--the most woful complainer
while glorifying fortitude--the most uncertain and stormy in mood,