After the expulsion I was adrift, knowing no craft, belonging to no religious body, and without social or political interest. I engaged myself to a schoolmaster. The story of my very brief stay with him has been elsewhere told with some variation, but I may as well relate it here so as to make my little history complete. The school was somewhere in Stoke Newington. I got there in the evening when it was quite dark. After a word or two with my chief I was shown into a large school-room. Two candles were placed on a raised desk, and this was all the light permitted for the illumination of the great empty space round me. The walls were hung with maps, and the place of honour on the end wall was occupied by a huge drawing of the globe, in perspective, carefully coloured. This masterpiece was the work of the proprietor, an example of the precious learning which might be acquired at his “establishment”. After I had sat down for a few minutes a servant brought me my supper, placed it on a desk, and showed me my bedroom. I ate my meal, and after some time, as nobody came to see me, I thought I had better go to bed. I had to ascend a ladder, which I pulled up after me. When I had shut the door I looked out of window. Before me lay London and the dull glare of its lights. There was no distinct noise perceptible; but a deadened roar came up to me. Over in the south-west was the house of the friend I had left, always a warm home for me when I was in town. Then there fell upon me what was the beginning of a trouble which has lasted all my life. The next afternoon I went to the proprietor and told him I could not stay. He was greatly amazed, and still more so because I could give him no reason for leaving. He protested very reasonably that I could not break my engagement at the beginning of term, but he gave me permission to look for a substitute. I found a Scotch graduate who, like myself, had been accused of heresy, and had nothing to do. He came the same day, and I went back to — Terrace, somewhere out by Haverstock Hill. I forget its name; it was a dull row of stuccoed ugliness. But to me that day Grasmere, the Quantocks, or the Cornish sea-coast would have been nothing compared with that stucco line. When I knocked at the door the horrible choking fog had rolled away: I rushed inside; there was a hearty embrace, and the sun shone gloriously. Still, I had nothing to do. At this point I had intended to stop. A good part of my life henceforward has appeared under disguise in one of my books, but I think on reconsideration it will be better to record here also what little remains to be told about myself, and to narrate it as history. I called on several publishers and asked for employment, but could get none till I came to John Chapman, editor and proprietor of the _Westminster Review_, as well as publisher, mainly of books which were theologically heretical, and, I am sorry to say, did not pay. He lived at 142 Strand.