My dear Mrs. Clarke,—I will share anything with you, and can only wish—at least for myself—that the matter to be shared came not in so pleasant a shape as that dirt in yellow gold. I have heard naught of the American, and would rather that his gift came brightened through you than from his own hand. The savage, with glimpses of civilization, is male.
Do you read the Morning Chronicle? Do you devour those marvellous
revelations of the inferno of misery, ot wretchedness that is smouldering under our
feet? We live in a mockery of Christianity that, with the thought of its hypocrisy,
makes me sick. We know nothing of this terrible life that is about us—us, in
our smug respectability. To read of the sufferings of one class, and of the
avarice, the tyranny, the pocket cannibalism of the other, makes one almost wonder
that the world should go on, that the misery and wretchedness of the earth are not,
by an Almighty fiat, ended. And when we see the spires of pleasant churches
pointing to Heaven, and are told—paying thousands to bishops for the glad
intelligence—that we are Christians! the cant of this country is enough to
poison the atmosphere.
| DOUGLAS JERROLD AND HIS LETTERS. | 291 |
