he founder of _The Nonconformist_ newspaper
and of the Anti-State Church Association, as the Society for the
Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control loved to describe
itself--(good heavens, what a mouthful!)--was an Independent minister at
Leicester. How many whom I knew as pressmen are gone! Of one of them I
would fain recall the memory, and that is Mr. James Clarke, of _The
Christian World_, with whom it was my privilege to be associated many a
long year. In all my experience of editors I never knew a more
honourable, upright man, or one of greater clearness of head and
kindliness of heart. He died prematurely, but not till he had
revolutionised the whole tone of our popular theology. It was an honour
to be connected with such a man. He commenced life as a reporter, and
lived to be a wealthy man by the paper he conducted with such skill. And
what a friend he was to the struggling literary man or reporter! I lay
emphasis on this, because my reviewers sometimes tell me I am cynical. I
ask, How can a man be otherwise who has been behind the scenes, as I have
been, for nearly fifty years?

One meets with curious characters among the gentlemen of the Press. I
recall the memory of one who was often to be seen in Fleet Street at the
time I was in Mr. Cassell's employ. He was fair-haired, short and stout
in figure, very good-natured, with an amount of cheek only equalled by
his ignorance. Originally, I think he had been a printer, till his
ambition soon led him to fly at higher game, and under a military
_nom-de-plume_ he compiled several handbooks of popular games--games of
which, by the bye, he knew as little as a Hottentot--and, I believe, came
to be the sporting correspondent of a London paper--a position he held at
the time of his death. For statements that were rather unreliable he had
a capacity which almost bordered on the sublime. On one occasion he
walked up Ludgate Hill with an acquaintance of my own, and nodded
familiarly to certain individuals. That was Dickens, he said to my
friend, after one of these friendly encounters. Of another he explained,
that was Thackeray, and so on. Unfortunately, however, my friend knew
that the individual thus pointed was engaged as a bookseller's assistant
in the Row. Once when I happened to meet him he was rather seedy, which
he accounted for to me by the remark that he had been dining with a
lord--a statement about as true as the generality of his