t that he too had been called to the stage of the
great world.

It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the
French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his
fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a
conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed
New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most
imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the
Renaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum._ The
subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and
after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young
country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the
musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of
the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among
the stars.

With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his
work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek
that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion
Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing
himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to
these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could
he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had
transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he
could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk
is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some
day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for
ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with
what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled!

He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his
heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break
in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories.
Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents!
Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot
up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these
walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours.

Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they
can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from
extern