We reached Liverpool at length, and I was soon at Betley, the native place of my wife, which was to be my temporary home. And now, if I had fallen into good hands, or if the better thoughts and tendencies of my soul had been sufficiently strong, I might have entered at once on a happier course. But I encountered an unlooked-for difficulty. As I have said, my intention was, on landing in England, to begin a periodical, and to keep apart from persons of extravagant views. I was not a Christian, nor did I, at the time, suppose I should ever become one; but I was an earnest moralist, and I had become more moderate in my ideas both on religious and political subjects. And I was, to some extent, prepared to receive fresh light. I had got an impression,--I had had it for some time before I left America,--that my mind was not in a thoroughly healthy state,--that it was not exactly itself,--that it was so much biassed in favor of irreligion, that it was incapable of doing justice to arguments for a God and Providence, for a spiritual world and a future life. I partly believed, and now I know, that facts and arguments in favor of the great fundamental doctrines of religion, did not affect and influence me so much as they ought,--that my doubts and disbeliefs were stronger than facts or the nature of things warranted. I suspected, what now I regard as past doubt, that erroneous principles, and a defective method of reasoning, and long practice in searching out flaws in arguments, and detecting and exposing errors and pious frauds, had disposed me too strongly to distrust and disbelief,--that I was in fact a slave to bad habits of thought and reasoning, as really as the inveterate drunkard is the slave to his irrational appetite for strong drink. What I should believe in case the freedom of my mind and the just and harmonious action of its powers were fully restored, I could not tell; but I had a strong impression, amounting to something like an assurance, that I should believe more than I did with respect to God and a spiritual world. Had I, on arriving in England, found myself in favorable circumstances, my mind might quickly have recovered its freedom, and returned, in part at least, to the faith of its earlier days. But this was not my lot. I was beset with new temptations, and was doomed to further disappointments. The Secularists had got out a prospectus of a new paper, and I was urged to become one of the editors; and thinking that it would seem mean and selfish to begin a paper of my own under such circumstances, I reluctantly consented. I however stipulated for full control over one half of the paper, and when I found that articles of a disgraceful and mischievous tendency were published in the other half, I published a special notice in mine, every week, that I was not answerable for those articles.