such horrible torture hereafter. Why, if the thing
succeeds, and I really cannot see what is to hinder it, it is hardly
possible to exaggerate its importance, nor the proportions which it may
ultimately assume," etc., etc.

Again I asked Ernest whether he minded my printing this. He winced, but
said "No, not if it helps you to tell your story: but don't you think it
is too long?"

I said it would let the reader see for himself how things were going in
half the time that it would take me to explain them to him.

"Very well then, keep it by all means."

I continue turning over my file of Ernest's letters and find as follows--

"Thanks for your last, in answer to which I send you a rough copy of a
letter I sent to the _Times_ a day or two back. They did not insert
it, but it embodies pretty fully my ideas on the parochial visitation
question, and Pryer fully approves of the letter. Think it carefully
over and send it back to me when read, for it is so exactly my present
creed that I cannot afford to lose it.

"I should very much like to have a _viva voce_ discussion on these
matters: I can only see for certain that we have suffered a dreadful
loss in being no longer able to excommunicate. We should
excommunicate rich and poor alike, and pretty freely too. If this
power were restored to us we could, I think, soon put a stop to by far
the greater part of the sin and misery with which we are surrounded."

These letters were written only a few weeks after Ernest had been
ordained, but they are nothing to others that he wrote a little later on.

In his eagerness to regenerate the Church of England (and through this
the universe) by the means which Pryer had suggested to him, it occurred
to him to try to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of the
poor by going and living among them. I think he got this notion from
Kingsley's "Alton Locke," which, High Churchman though he for the nonce
was, he had devoured as he had devoured Stanley's Life of Arnold,
Dickens's novels, and whatever other literary garbage of the day was most
likely to do him harm; at any rate he actually put his scheme into
practice, and took lodgings in Ashpit Place, a small street in the
neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, in a house of which the landlady was
the widow of a cabman.

This lady occupied the whole ground floor. In the front kitchen there
was a tinker. The back kitchen was let to a b