She said that that of itself would account for many of Ockham's
eccentricities. He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life
than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek it in
what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a sailor,
and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The Great
Eastern.' He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the other
workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.

I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even
though it might show some want of proper balance.

She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would yet
accomplish something worthy of himself. 'The great difficulty with our
nobility is apt to be, that they do not understand the working-classes,
so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now going through an
experience which may yet fit him to do great good when he comes to the
peerage. I am trying to influence him to do good among the workmen, and
to interest himself in schools for their children. I think,' she added,
'I have great influence over Ockham,--the greater, perhaps, that I never
make any claim to authority.'

This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she always
had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection with her.
Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in this respect
she was so different from the rest of the world, that it would be
difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing would
have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them as if she
had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in transgression; but
it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as diseases and