r main
subject would be telling in the extreme from the fact of her blending
such thorough womanliness of person, character, and sentiment with such
vigorous championship of a doctrine against which I do not believe any
prejudice exists. Drag in the religious difficulty, however, and you
immediately array against it a host of prejudices, whether reasonable
ones or the reverse is not now the question. I am only concerned with
the unwisdom of having called them into existence. I own I thought that
Christianity had been the means of raising woman from her state of
Oriental degradation to the position she occupies in civilized
countries. But I was only there to listen, not to speak; and I confess I
came away in a divided frame of mind. I was pleased with the paper, but
irritated to think that a lady, holding such excellent cards, should
risk playing a losing game.

CHAPTER XII.

AN OPEN-AIR TICHBORNE MEETING.

When Sydney Smith, from the depths of his barbarian ignorance, sought to
rise to the conception of a Puseyite, he said in substance much as
follows:--"I know not what these silly people want, except to revive
every obsolete custom which the common sense of mankind has allowed to
go to sleep." Puseyism is not to our present purpose; but Tichborne-ism
is--for it has attained to the dignity of a veritable ism--and we may
define it much after the same method, as an attempt, not, indeed, to
revive the claims of, but to restore to society a person, who, after a
trial of unexampled length, was consigned by the verdict of a jury, and
the consequent sentence of the Lord Chief Justice, to the possibly
uncongenial retirement of Millbank Penitentiary. With the rights or
wrongs of such an event I have simply nothing to do. I abandoned the
Tichborne Trial at an early stage in a condition of utter bewilderment;
and directly an old gentleman sought to button-hole me, and argue that
he must be the man, or he couldn't be the man, I made off, or changed
the conversation as rapidly as I could.

But when the question had at length been resolved by wiser heads than
mine, and when, too, I felt I could write calmly, with no fear of an
action for contempt of court before my eyes, I confess that a poster
announcing an open-air Tichborne meeting in Mr. Warren's cricket-field,
Notting Hill, was too fascinating for me. I had heard of such gatherings
in provincial places and East End halls; but this invasion of the West
was breaking n