Mr. Hale met with several pupils, recommended to him by Mr. Bell,
or by the more immediate influence of Mr. Thornton. They were
mostly of the age when many boys would be still at school, but,
according to the prevalent, and apparently well-founded notions
of Milton, to make a lad into a good tradesman he must be caught
young, and acclimated to the life of the mill, or office, or
warehouse. If he were sent to even the Scotch Universities, he
came back unsettled for commercial pursuits; how much more so if
he went to Oxford or Cambridge, where he could not be entered
till he was eighteen? So most of the manufacturers placed their
sons in sucking situations' at fourteen or fifteen years of age,
unsparingly cutting away all off-shoots in the direction of
literature or high mental cultivation, in hopes of throwing the
whole strength and vigour of the plant into commerce. Still there
were some wiser parents; and some young men, who had sense enough
to perceive their own deficiencies, and strive to remedy them.
Nay, there were a few no longer youths, but men in the prime of
life, who had the stern wisdom to acknowledge their own
ignorance, and to learn late what they should have learnt early.
Mr. Thornton was perhaps the oldest of Mr. Hale's pupils. He was
certainly the favourite. Mr. Hale got into the habit of quoting
his opinions so frequently, and with such regard, that it became
a little domestic joke to wonder what time, during the hour
appointed for instruction, could be given to absolute learning,
so much of it appeared to have been spent in conversation.
Margaret rather encouraged this light, merry way of viewing her
father's acquaintance with Mr. Thornton, because she felt that
her mother was inclined to look upon this new friendship of her
husband's with jealous eyes. As long as his time had been solely
occupied with his books and his parishioners, as at Helstone, she
had appeared to care little whether she saw much of him or not;
but now that he looked eagerly forward to each renewal of his
intercourse with Mr. Thornton, she seemed hurt and annoyed, as if
he were slighting her companionship for the first time. Mr.
Hale's over-praise had the usual effect of over-praise upon his
auditors; they were a little inclined to rebel against Aristides
being always called the Just.
After a quiet life in a country parsonage for more than twenty
years, there was something dazzling to Mr. Hale in the energy
which conquered immense difficulties with ease; the power of the
machinery of Milton, the power of the men of Milton, impressed
him with a sense of grandeur, which he yielded to without caring
to inquire into the details of its exercise. But Margaret went
less abroad, among machinery and men; saw less of power in its
public effect, and, as it happened, she was thrown with one or
two of those who, in all measures affecting masses of people,
must be acute sufferers for the good of many. The question always
is, has everything been done to make the sufferings of these
exceptions as small as possible? Or, in the triumph of the
crowded procession, have the helpless been trampled on, instead
of being gently lifted aside out of the roadway of the conqueror,
whom they have no power to accompany on his march?