Under Our Present System Of Education The
Greater Part Of What The Poor Man's Children Learn Is Clean
Forgotten In A Few Years; And If Not, Serves Mainly To Create
And Foster Discontent, Which Vents Itself In A Passion For
Mass-Meetings And The Fuliginous Oratory Of Our Hyde Parks.
The emigration scheme for poor-law children as advocated by
Mrs. Close is the most promising, in its way, yet brought
before the public, and is deserving of every support.
In the absence of any such projects as these, the
hopelessness of the task, and the depressing effect of the
contact with much wretchedness, wore me out. I had a nursery
of my own, and was not justified in risking infectious
diseases. A saint would have been more heroic, and could
besides have promised that sweetest of consolations to
suffering millions - the compensation of Eternal Happiness.
I could not give them even hope, for I had none to spare.
The root-evil I felt to be the overcrowding due to the
reckless intercourse of the sexes; and what had Providence to
do with a law of Nature, obedience to which entailed
unspeakable misery?
CHAPTER XLVI
IN the autumn following the end of the Franco-German war, Dr.
Bird and I visited all the principal battlefields. In
England the impression was that the bloodiest battle was
fought at Gravelotte. The error was due, I believe, to our
having no war correspondent on the spot. Compared with that
on the plains between St. Marie and St. Privat, Gravelotte
was but a cavalry skirmish.
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