d the working-classes,
so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now going through an
experience which may yet fit him to do great good when he comes to the
peerage. I am trying to influence him to do good among the workmen, and
to interest himself in schools for their children. I think,' she added,
'I have great influence over Ockham,--the greater, perhaps, that I never
make any claim to authority.'

This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she always
had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection with her.
Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in this respect
she was so different from the rest of the world, that it would be
difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing would
have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them as if she
had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in transgression; but
it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as diseases and
immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.

She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil. She
expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only as
eccentricities; {147} and she incessantly devoted herself to the task of
guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those higher
results of which she often thought that even their faults were prophetic.

Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one
more of her letters. My return from that visit in Europe was met by the
sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account. At the time
of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me. The letter
given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons of
remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep
interest. One of them is the 'friend' she speaks of.

'LONDON, Feb. 6, 1859.

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I seem to feel our friend as a bridge, over which
our broken outward communication can be renewed without effort. Why
broken? The words I would have uttered at one time were like drops of
blood from my heart. Now I sympathise with the calmness you have
gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own. Loss and
restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but "to the present
live." As long as they are in