This sinful dislike of poverty he overcame in early manhood. A high
religious enthusiasm enabled him to overcome it, but his instinctive
dislike of the lowly life--intellectual lowliness as well as
physical--gathered within these cottages, seemed to have returned again.
He asked himself if he were wanting in natural compassion, and if all
that he had of goodness in him were a debt he owed to the Church. It was
in patience rather than in pity maybe that he was lacking; and pursuing
this idea, he recalled the hopes he entertained when he railed off a
strip of ground in front of Bridget Clery's house. But that strip of
garden had inspired no spirit of emulation. Eliza was perhaps more
patient than he, and he began to wonder if she had any definite aim in
view, and if the spectacle of the convent, with its show of nuns walking
under the trees, would eventually awaken some desire of refinement in
the people, if the money their farms now yielded would produce some sort
of improvement in their cottages, the removal of those dreadfully heavy
smells, and a longing for colour that would find expression in the
planting of flowers.

They gave their money willingly enough for the adornment of their
chapel, for stained glass, incense, candles, and for music, and were it
not for the services of the Church he didn't know into what barbarism
the people mightn't have fallen: the tones of the organ sustaining clear
voices of nuns singing a Mass by Mozart must sooner or later inspire
belief in the friendliness of pure air and the beauty of flowers.
Flowers are the only beautiful things within the reach of these poor
people. Roses all may have, and it was pleasant to think that there is
nothing more entirely natural or charming in the life of man than his
love of flowers: it preceded his love of music; no doubt an appreciation
of something better in the way of art than a jig played on the pipes
would follow close on the purification of the home.