, into
efforts for the protection of workhouse servants, into the homeliest
acts of ministry toward the sick, till her dowdy little figure and her
face, which but for the stress of London, of labor, and of poverty,
would have had a blunt fresh-colored dairymaid's charm, became symbols
of a divine and sacred helpfulness in the eyes of hundreds of straining
men and women.

The husband also, after a day spent in chambers, would give his evenings
to teaching or committee work. They never allowed themselves to breathe
even to each other that life might have brighter things to show
them than the neighborhood of the Goswell Road. There was a certain
narrowness in their devotion; they had their bitternesses and ignorances
like other people; but the more Robert knew of them the more profound
became his admiration for that potent spirit of social help which in our
generation Comtism has done so much to develop, even among those of us
who are but moderately influenced by Comte's philosophy, and can make
nothing of the religion of Humanity.

Wardlaw has no large part in the story of Elsmere's work in North R----.
In spite of Robert's efforts, and against his will, the man of meaner
gifts and commoner clay was eclipsed by that brilliant and persuasive
something in Elsmere which a kind genius had infused into him at birth.
And we shall see that in time Robert's energies took a direction which
Wardlaw could not follow with any heartiness. But at the beginning
Elsmere owed him much, and it was a debt he was never tired of honoring.

In the fast place, Wardlaw's choice of the Elgood Street room as a fresh
centre for civilizing effort had been extremely shrewd. The district
lying about it, as Robert soon came to know, contained a number of
promising elements.

Close by the dingy street which sheltered their school-room, rose the
great pile of a new factory of artistic pottery, a rival on the north
side of the river to Doulton's immense works on the south. The old
winding streets near it, and the blocks of workman's dwellings recently
erected under its shadow, were largely occupied by the workers in its
innumerable floors, and among these workers was a large proportion of
skilled artisans, men often of a considerable amount of cultivation,
earning high wages, and maintaining a high standard of comfort. A great
many of them, trained in the art school which Murray Edwardes had been
largely instrumental in establishing within easy distan