courageous and most
affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those
tigers were strangers. 'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's
aid.' How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the
little _spuddling_ 'letters' from Botley! This correspondence occupied a
good part of my time: I had all the children with me, turn and turn
about; and, in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two
eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used, for a part
of the two years, to send them a few hours in the day to an ABBE, who
lived in Castle-street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my
mind; and, when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned
_fresh_ and cheerful, full of vigour, and _full of hope_, of finally
seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without
caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own
family were safe; because, say what any one might, the _community, taken
as a whole_, had _suffered this thing to be done unto us_.

305. The paying of the work-people, the keeping of the accounts, the
referring to books, the writing and reading of letters; this everlasting
mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own
surprise, find, at the end of the two years, that I had a parcel of
_scholars_ growing up about me; and, long before the end of the time, I
had _dictated many Registers_ to my two eldest children. Then, there was
_copying_ out of books, which taught _spelling correctly_. The
calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the
_use_, the _necessity_, of the thing, led to the study. By-and-by, we
had to look into the _laws_ to know what to do about the _highways_,
about the _game_, about the _poor_, and all rural and _parochial_
affairs. I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my
fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land,
and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating
enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been
able to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful
information, habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for
innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures: the fangs had made me and them
pennyless; but, they had not been able to take from us our health or our
mental possessions; and these were ready for application as
circumstances might ordain.