, and a half-effaced coat of arms, which I might have deciphered any
day, had I taken the trouble to get a ladder, but always put it off. All
I can say for the house is, that it was well stricken in years, with a
certain air of sombre comfort about it; contained a vast number of rooms
and closets; and, what was of far greater importance, was got by me a
dead bargain.

Its individuality attracted me. I grew fond of it for itself, and for its
associations, until other associations of a hateful kind first disturbed,
and then destroyed, their charm. I forgave its dull red brick, and
pinched white windows, for the sake of the beloved and cheerful faces
within: its ugliness was softened by its age; and its sombre evergreens,
and moss-grown stone flower-pots, were relieved by the brilliant hues of
a thousand gay and graceful flowers that peeped among them, or nodded
over the grass.

Within that old house lay my life's treasure! I had a darling little
girl of nine, and another little darling--a boy--just four years of age;
and dearer, unspeakably, than either--a wife--the prettiest, gayest,
best little wife in all London. When I tell you that our income was
scarcely L380 a-year, you will perceive that our establishment cannot
have been a magnificent one; yet, I do assure you, we were more
comfortable than a great many lords, and happier, I dare say, than the
whole peerage put together.

This happiness was not, however, what it ought to have been. The reader
will understand at once, and save me a world of moralising
circumlocution, when he learns, bluntly and nakedly, that, among all my
comforts and blessings, I was an infidel.

I had not been without religious training; on the contrary, more than
average pains had been bestowed upon my religious instruction from my
earliest childhood. My father, a good, plain, country clergyman, had
worked hard to make me as good as himself; and had succeeded, at least,
in training me in godly habits. He died, however, when I was but twelve
years of age; and fate had long before deprived me of the gentle care of
a mother. A boarding-school, followed by a college life, where nobody
having any very direct interest in realising in my behalf the ancient
blessing, that in fulness of time I should "die a good old man," I was
left very much to my own devices, which, in truth, were none of the best.

Among these were the study of Voltaire, Tom Paine, Hume, Shelley, and the
whole school of infidels