r" as folk to be educated, looked after, charitably dealt with,
and always treated with most perfect courtesy, the courtesy being due
from me, as a lady, to all equally, whether they were rich or poor. But
to Mr. Roberts "the poor" were the working-bees, the wealth producers,
with a right to self-rule, not to looking after, with a right to justice,
not to charity, and he preached his doctrines to me, in season and out of
season. "What do you think of John Bright?" he demanded of me one day. "I
have never thought of him at all," I answered lightly. "Isn't he a rather
rough sort of man, who goes about making rows?" "There, I thought so," he
broke out fiercely. "That's just what they say. I believe some of you
fine ladies would not go to heaven if you had to rub shoulders with John
Bright, the noblest man God ever gave to the cause of the poor." And then
he launched out into stories of John Bright's work and John Bright's
eloquence, and showed me the changes that work and eloquence had made in
the daily lives of the people.

With Mr. Roberts, his wife, and two daughters, I went to Switzerland as
the autumn drew near. It would be of little interest to tell how we went
to Chamounix and worshipped Mont Blanc, how we crossed the Mer de Glace
and the Mauvais Pas, how we visited the Monastery of St. Bernard (I
losing my heart to the beautiful dogs), how we went by steamer down the
lake of Thun, how we gazed at the Jungfrau and saw the exquisite
Staubbach, how we visited Lausanne, and Berne, and Geneva, how we stood
beside the wounded Lion, and shuddered in the dungeon of Chillon, how we
walked distances we never should have attempted in England, how we
younger ones lost ourselves on a Sunday afternoon, after ascending a
mountain, and returned footsore and weary, to meet a party going out to
seek us with lanterns and ropes. All these things have been so often
described that I will not add one more description to the list, nor dwell
on that strange feeling of awe, of wonder, of delight, that everyone must
have felt, when the glory of the peaks clad in "everlasting snow" is for
the first time seen against the azure sky on the horizon, and you whisper
to yourself, half breathless: "The Alps! The Alps!"

During that autumn I became engaged to the Rev. Frank Besant, giving up
with a sigh of regret my dreams of the "religious life", and substituting
for them the work which would have to be done as the wife of a priest,
laboring ever in