Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/193

Rh in Belgium. This invitation had reached me, indeed, before I left Sweden, and I then determined to obey the call. I had never received a more agreeable, and more valuable invitation. I should thus, in Brussels, hear, from deputies sent from the Christian kingdoms of every part of the world, what was doing, and had already been done for the prevention of crime and the alleviation of distress, hear them consulting together as to what ought to be done in the future for this purpose. No wonder, therefore, that the impulse of my mind emulated the power of steam, in attracting me to Brussels.

I arrived there punctually on the afternoon of the 14th. On the same evening I saw Edward Duepetiaux, a man who in manner and expression of countenance possesses the peculiar combination of energy and gentleness, of the lion and the lamb, which I have seen only in one other man—our great Geijer. From the first moment I felt confidence in him as a brother. We met for the first time as though we had known each other all our days.

On the 15th of September, the Congress de Bienfaisance was opened, the first Congress on earth in which human love and science stood, before all nations, hand in hand for the same openly declared object—the best interests of the poor, with especial reference to their earthly life; and which, therefore, deserved the foremost place in the annals of the human race. Because, whilst it may be important for the regulation of outward, temporal affairs, to divide and arrange realms and peoples under certain princes and rulers,