How the
system will work I can't tell. I think the college classes might be
very useful for finishing the education of ladies intended to go out
as governesses, but what progress little girls will make in them
seems to me another question.
'My dear Miss Wooler, I read attentively all you say about Miss
Martineau; the sincerity and constancy of your solicitude touches me
very much. I should grieve to neglect or oppose your advice, and yet
I do not feel that it would be right to give Miss Martineau up
entirely. There is in her nature much that is very noble. Hundreds
have forsaken her, more, I fear, in the apprehension that their fair
names may suffer if seen in connection with hers, than from any pure
convictions, such as you suggest, of harm consequent on her fatal
tenets. With these fair-weather friends I cannot bear to rank. And
for her sin, is it not one of those which God and not man must judge?
'To speak the truth, my dear Miss Wooler, I believe if you were in my
place, and knew Miss Martineau as I do--if you had shared with me the
proofs of her rough but genuine kindliness, and had seen how she
secretly suffers from abandonment, you would be the last to give her
up; you would separate the sinner from the sin, and feel as if the
right lay rather in quietly adhering to her in her strait, while that
adherence is unfashionable and unpopular, than in turning on her your
back when the world sets the example.
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