'
MRS. BROWNING.
You will be weary of my lengthiness; and perhaps I am lingering too
long over the earlier portion of my narrative. Something is due to
the disproportion assumed in our memories by the first twenty years
of existence--something, perhaps, to reluctance to passing from
comparative sunshine to shadow. There was still a period of
brightness, but it was so uneventful that I have no excuse for
dwelling on it further than to say that Henderson, our excellent
curate, had already made a great difference in the parish, and it
was beginning to be looked on as almost equal to Hillside. The
children were devoted to Emily, who was the source of all the
amenities of their poor little lives. The needlework of the school
was my mother's pride; and our church and its services, though you
would shudder at them now, were then thought presumptuously superior
'for a country parish.' They were a real delight and blessing to
us, as well as to many more of the flock, who still, in their old
age, remember and revere Parson Henderson as a sort of apostle.
The dawning of the new Poor-Law led to investigations which revealed
the true conditions of the peasant's life--its destitution,
recklessness, and dependence. We tried to mend matters by inducing
families to emigrate, but this renewed the distrust which had at
first beheld in the schools an attempt to enslave the children.
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