s so good as to undertake the delivery of a small sum to her weekly
from me, quite sufficient to enable her to refuse the parish allowance,
and live comfortably (he wrote to me a few months afterwards, and told
me that it was required no longer, for that Madge was gone to rest at
last); and a good deal more news he gave me, very little of which is
interesting here.

He told me that Lord C----, John Thornton's friend, was dead; that he
never thoroughly got over the great Reform debate, in which he
over-exerted himself; and that, after the passing of the Bill, he had
walked joyfully home and had a fit, which prevented his ever taking any
part in politics afterwards, though he lived above ten years. That his
son was not so popular as his father, in consequence of his politics,
which were too conservative for the new class of tenants his father had
brought in; and his religious opinions, which, said the clergyman, were
those of a sound Churchman; by which he meant, I rather suspect, that
he was a pretty smart Tractarian. I was getting won with this young
gentleman, in spite of religious difference, when he chose to say that
the parish had never been right since Maberly had had it, and that the
Dissenters always raved about him to this day; whereby, he concluded,
that Frank Maberly was far from orthodox. I took occasion to say that
Frank was the man of all others in this world whom I admired most, and
that, considering he had sealed his faith with his life, I thought that
he ought to be very reverently spoken of. After this there arose a
little coolness, and he went home.

I went up to town by the Great Western, and, for the first time, knew
what was meant by railway travelling. True, I had seen and travelled on
that monument of human industry, the Hobson's Bay Railroad, but that
stupendous work hardly prepared me for the Great Western. And on this
journey I began to understand, for the first time in my life, what a
marvellous country this England of ours was. I wondered at the wealth
and traffic I saw, even in comparatively unimportant towns. I wondered
at the beauty and solidity of the railway works; at the vast crowds of
people which I saw at every station; at the manly, independent bearing
of the men of the working classes, which combined so well with their
civility and intelligence; and I thought, with a laugh, of the fate of
any eighty thousand men who might shove their noses into this bee-hive,
while there was such m