Letter to My Fellow Workers.
The Poor Law Commission has necessarily occupied much of my time, and bids fair to continue to do so. It is naturally very interesting. We have visited Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, South Wales, the Eastern Counties, the Western Counties, and Scotland. My colleagues went also to the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury and to Northumberland; but I could not go. Next year we purpose visiting Ireland. The time has not arrived for making any remarks on the vast field which has opened before us; it is deeply interesting, partly by the great and important questions it suggests, partly by the large number of individuals of whose life-work we get some idea. These latter have often and often recalled to me Miss Alexander’s beautiful legend of the Hidden Servants; and, as I have got a glimpse of the righteous manufacturer, the devoted leader of the Friendly Society, the generous founder of some out-of-sight charity, the faithful nurse, the energetic matron or teacher, the self-sacrificing wise guardian, the humble and gentle pauper, I have heard echo in my ear the thankful words: “How many Thy hidden servants are.”
Of course there is the other side; and the problem appears to me the more puzzling, the more the solution of it depends, not on machinery which Commissions may recommend and Parliaments set up, but on the number of faithful men and women whom England can secure and inspire as faithful servants in their manifold duties.
We have placed on one such bit of land, given to the National Trust in memory of my mother, a stone seat designed by Mr. Hoole. Near it her eldest great grandchild has planted an oak; we hope he will remember it in years to come, and connect the future with the past, where it had its root. The seat bears words from Lowell’s Commemoration Ode, from the passage:—
“Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow,
For never shall their aureoled presence lack;
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show.
We find in our dull road their shining track
In every nobler mood,