My son will be quite proud at receiving the first copy of the new Quarterly, the only one, I believe, that can go to India by to-morrow’s mail. I am very much obliged to you for your great kindness in sending it.
I have been peeping into it, and if the gaudy debauchery of Paris, as detailed in Art. No. I, be contrasted with the dark picture described by Lord Ashley, and alluded to in Art. 6, it must, I think, be admitted that the outside of this world has no more right to be shocked at the immorality of the inside, than the pot, many years ago, had to complain of the complexion of the kettle.
I happened the other day, as I was following a stream
through the country, to ride by a silk factory worked by boys and girls, and,
from the little I heard and saw, merely en
passant, I think I could convince you, that in spite of
Lord Ashley’s popular speech, the
Devil passes many more hours above ground than below, and if you were to ask him, I believe he would
tell you, with a grin, that many who wear silk are no better than those who make it. It is the fashion just now to be shocked at the
idea of a boy and girl sitting cross-legged in the same “cirne”
while they are being raised from the bottom of a mine, and yet their thin
begrimed faces would probably blush if they could see one of our dandies and
damsels waltzing together, and though we are all horrified even at the
description of a poor miner’s daughter working in deshabille in utter
darkness many fathoms below the surface of the earth, what would she, poor
exhausted creature, say, if suddenly rising through
| 452 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY |
