The pamphlet excited a certain amount of interest, as well among working-men as those higher in society: but I had yet to learn how strongly the doors of every Government office are barred against all intruders, and how loud and general must be the knocking before they will open. I must in fairness add that I had also to be made aware how much official doors are beset by schemers, and how naturally groundless projects raise a prejudice against all proposals whatever. Any one curious on the subject may find some notice of the plan in the ‘Penny Magazine,’ Vol. I., p. 42. However, I scarcely need add that no result followed, either to the public or to myself, the evils which I had sought to mitigate being otherwise grappled with in the Poor Law Reform of 1834. “Meantime my malady increased, and it was at length determined that the school at Hazelwood should be disposed of, and the removal to Bruce Castle made complete, the middle of 1833 being fixed upon as the time for the change. My intention was to employ the whole of the midsummer holidays, and as much more time as I could profitably so spend, in a tour on the Continent, leaving the question of my return to be decided by the state of my health and other circumstances. I had begun to feel unsettled in my occupation. In addition to its wearing effect upon my health, I had begun to doubt the expediency of my continuing in a profession into which I had entered rather from necessity than from choice, though I had subsequently laboured in it, like other members of my family, with zeal and even enthusiasm, and in which the very progress made by the school in public estimation made my position on some important points increasingly uncomfortable. This pressed the more after the untimely death of one of the two brothers associated with me at Bruce Castle, the youngest of our family, who, having enjoyed many of those advantages in education which were denied to me, had been as it were my complement. It is true, indeed, that the accession of my brother Arthur from Hazelwood brought present relief, but this also facilitated my withdrawal, giving me as a successor one whose heart I knew to be fully and fixedly engaged in his work.[73] My ambition had grown with our success, or rather, indeed, far outrun it; and I was now thoroughly convinced—partly, I must admit, by a check in our tide of success—that in my present career, unless I could add to my other qualifications those classical acquirements which rank so high in general estimation, it could have no sufficient scope. I think, indeed, I was perfectly honest in saying, as I did at the time, that neither wealth nor power was my main object, though I was not insensible to the allurements of either, but that it was indispensable to my desires to do,