Christian virtues and still believed that these virtues could stand
alone, without the support of the Christian creed.

The temptation to describe dresses has always to be sternly resisted
when dealing with any part of the Victorian era, so merely pausing to
note that it seems to have been a triumph on the part of Mrs.
Grosjean to have cut a _short_ skirt out of 8½ yards of material, I
reluctantly lay aside the letters at the time when Edward Chesterton
and Marie were married and had set about living happily ever after.

These two had no fear of life: they belonged to a generation which
cheerfully created a home and brought fresh life into being. In doing
it, they did a thousand other things, so that the home they made was
full of vital energies for the children who were to grow up in it.
Gilbert recollects his father as a man of a dozen hobbies, his study
as a place where these hobbies formed strata of exciting products,
awakening youthful covetousness in the matter of a new paint-box,
satisfying youthful imagination by the production of a toy-theatre.
His character, serene and humorous as his son describes him, is
reflected in his letters. Edward Chesterton did not use up his mental
powers in the family business. Taught by his father to be a good man
of business, he was in his private life a man of a thousand other
energies and ideas. "On the whole," says his son, "I am glad he was
never an artist. It might have stood in his way in becoming an
amateur. It might have spoilt his career; his private career. He
could never have made a vulgar success of all the thousand things be
did so successfully."

Here, Gilbert sees a marked distinction between that generation of
business men and the present in the use of leisure; he sees hobbies