But I ought to say that during these proceedings the people in the court, of juster feeling than the magistrates, frequently expressed their disapprobation of the speeches made to me. Mr. Capper's assertion that I was only actuated by a love of notoriety, were just the words to do me injury. The respectable people near, and the intelligent people at a distance, would believe the magistrate and disbelieve the sceptic, who had no friends to rebut the imputation. The vulgar bearing of this brutal old man lingered long in my memory as the most distinct thing of these proceedings. I should have thought less of it had it not come from an old man. The aged always inspire me with reverence, in their kindly aspects. They are the links which nature perpetuates between old time and our time--the human chroniclers of an experience the young can never know. They have followed the hearse of the old world, and are the legatees of Time, who has bequeathed to them his secrets and his conquests, which they in their turn distribute to us. When living at Islington, in 1848, I frequently passed, but not without sadness, nor sometimes without tears, an old man who stood near the Merlin's Cave to beg. He resembled one whom I cannot name. I could see on his brow the fresh traces of a struggle still going on between dignity and destitution. And I often gave him the price of the biscuit intended for my dinner, in the secret hope we all have in a kind act that some one else may repeat it to those we love; and I indulged the hope that others might approach with the same respectful feelings him to whom I have alluded, if ever, with untamed pride and broken heart, he should stand in his grey hairs on the high way to beg--which I have dreaded through so many years. When taken back to the station-house, Captain Lefroy, who was at the head of the police, introduced me to Mr. Pinching, surgeon of the same corps. The captain, in a gentlemanly way, inquired if I would allow Mr. Pinching to reason with me on my opinions? I said, 'Certainly.' Mr. Pinching asked me the irrelevant question 'Did I believe in Jesus Christ?' and began a dry, historical argument to prove that there was the same evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ as for that of Henry the Fourth. I said, 'The argument is unnecessary with me. I do not care to argue whether he existed or not. My inquiry is not whether he lived, but what he _said._' Mr. Pinching's next speech was delivered with an air of sharp authority, and he began to address me rather rudely. He asked me was it not Robert Owen who made me an atheist? I replied, Mr. Owen himself was not an atheist. For myself, I had not become so till after the imprisonment of Mr. Southwell, which had led me to inquire into the grounds of religious opinion more closely than I had before done, and it had ended in my entire disbelief.