by the "majestic old man." Great, however, was the Chartist's amazement to hear the "Tory" Wordsworth say with reference to the Chartist movement, "You were right; I have always said the people were right in what they asked; but you went the wrong way to get it." On his return to London, Cooper engaged to lecture on Sunday evenings at South Place, Finsbury Square, and continued the work of public lecturer for the next eight years. During this time he lectured through the winter for various political and socialist societies in several large halls in London, such as the John Street Institution and the "Hall of Science," City Road, and filled up the time during the summer by lecturing tours throughout the kingdom. He had now become a _sceptic_, _i.e._ _doubter_, and confined himself in his lectures exclusively to secular topics, political or literary. The misery he had witnessed in Leicester and the Potteries, the failure of all his efforts to benefit the suffering poor, and the long imprisonment he had endured as a disinterested champion of their cause, had sorely shaken his faith in Divine Providence and driven him to the verge of downright atheism, but only to the verge: he declares that he was never an atheist, nor ever "proclaimed blank atheism in his public teaching."[67] Yet it must be confessed he went far in this direction. The worst period of his life in this respect was the winter of 1848-49, when, having become a disciple of Strauss, he engaged to give a series of lectures on Sunday evenings in the "Hall of Science" on the teachings of the "Leben Jesu." He says: "There is no part of my teaching as a public lecturer that I regret so deeply as this. It would rejoice my heart indeed if I could obliterate those lectures from the realm of fact."[68] But for the most part his addresses were on purely literary or historical subjects, and marvellous indeed was the versatility and extent of learning they displayed. The enumeration of topics alone would occupy several pages. Every one of the chief English poets and their poems, the history of every European country, the lives of great reformers, statesmen, generals, inventors, discoverers, men of science, musicians, ancient philosophers and modern philanthropists, negro slavery, taxation, national debt, the age of chivalry, the Middle Ages, wrongs of Poland, the Gypsies, ancient Egypt, astronomy, geology, natural history, the vegetable kingdom--these and scores of other topics were treated during these years of lecturing life in London and the provinces. In addition to these duties he had other cares and toils. In 1848-49 he edited a weekly paper called the _Plain Speaker_, and in the following year _Cooper's Journal_. His "Triumph of Perseverance" appeared in 1849, "Alderman Ralph" and "The Family Feud," two novels, in 1853 and 1855 respectively. [67] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 262, also pp. 356-367. [68] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 316.