of the friend I had left, always a warm home for me when I was in
town. Then there fell upon me what was the beginning of a trouble
which has lasted all my life. The next afternoon I went to the
proprietor and told him I could not stay. He was greatly amazed,
and still more so because I could give him no reason for leaving.
He protested very reasonably that I could not break my engagement at
the beginning of term, but he gave me permission to look for a
substitute. I found a Scotch graduate who, like myself, had been
accused of heresy, and had nothing to do. He came the same day, and
I went back to --- Terrace, somewhere out by Haverstock Hill. I
forget its name; it was a dull row of stuccoed ugliness. But to me
that day Grasmere, the Quantocks, or the Cornish sea-coast would
have been nothing compared with that stucco line. When I knocked at
the door the horrible choking fog had rolled away: I rushed inside;
there was a hearty embrace, and the sun shone gloriously. Still, I
had nothing to do.

At this point I had intended to stop. A good part of my life
henceforward has appeared under disguise in one of my books, but I
think on reconsideration it will be better to record here also what
little remains to be told about myself, and to narrate it as
history. I called on several publishers and asked for employment,
but could get none till I came to John Chapman, editor and
proprietor of the Westminster Review, as well as publisher, mainly
of books which were theologically heretical, and, I am sorry to say,
did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand.

As the New College council had tested my orthodoxy, so Chapman
tested my heresy and found that I was fit for the propagandist work
in No. 142 and for its society. He asked me if I believed in