f Lord Ashley's labours to defer the time when
children might legally be allowed to work in factories, and his
endeavours to still further limit the hours of permitted labour, have
fallen far short of his own humane wishes, and of those of every
benevolent and right-minded man who has carefully attended to this
subject; and in the present session of Parliament (1843) Sir James
Graham's attempt to establish a course of religious education among the
children employed in factories has been abandoned, in consequence of
what might easily have been foreseen, the vehement and turbulent
opposition of the Dissenters; so that for many years to come it may be
thought expedient to leave the religious instruction of children
entirely in the hands of the several denominations of Christians in the
Island, each body to work according to its own means and in its own way.
Such is my own confidence, a confidence I share with many others of my
most valued friends, in the superior advantages, both religious and
social, which attend a course of instruction presided over and guided by
the clergy of the Church of England, that I have no doubt, that if but
once its members, lay and clerical, were duly sensible of those
benefits, their Church would daily gain ground, and rapidly, upon every
shape and fashion of Dissent; and in that case, a great majority in
Parliament being sensible of these benefits, the ministers of the
country might be emboldened, were it necessary, to apply funds of the
State to the support of education on church principles. Before I
conclude, I cannot forbear noticing the strenuous efforts made at this
time in Parliament by so many persons to extend manufacturing and
commercial industry at the expense of agricultural, though we have
recently had abundant proofs that the apprehensions expressed by the
'Wanderer' were not groundless.

'I spake of mischief by the wise diffused,
With gladness thinking that the more it spreads
The healthier, the securer we become;
Delusion which a moment may destroy!'

The Chartists are well aware of this possibility, and cling to it with
all ardour and perseverance which nothing but wiser and more brotherly
dealing towards the many on the part of the wealthy few can moderate or
remove.

BOOK IX., _towards conclusion_.

'While from the grassy mountain's open side
We gazed.'

The point here fixed upon in my imagination is half-way up the northern
side of Loughrigg