all manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, which
any but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be
untenable. Thus several times she expressed to us her conviction
that my brother and myself were to be the two witnesses mentioned in
the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation, and dilated upon the
gratification she should experience upon finding that we had indeed
been reserved for a position of such distinction. We were as yet
mere children, and naturally took all for granted that our mother
told us; we therefore made a careful examination of the passage which
threw light upon our future; but on finding that the prospect was
gloomy and full of bloodshed we protested against the honours which
were intended for us, more especially when we reflected that the
mother of the two witnesses was not menaced in Scripture with any
particular discomfort. If we were to be martyrs, my mother ought to
wish to be a martyr too, whereas nothing was farther from her
intention. Her notion clearly was that we were to be massacred
somewhere in the streets of London, in consequence of the anti-
Christian machinations of the Pope; that after lying about unburied
for three days and a half we were to come to life again; and,
finally, that we should conspicuously ascend to heaven, in front,
perhaps, of the Foundling Hospital.

She was not herself indeed to share either our martyrdom or our
glorification, but was to survive us many years on earth, living in
an odour of great sanctity and reflected splendour, as the central
and most august figure in a select society. She would perhaps be
able indirectly, through her sons' influence with the Almighty, to
have a voice in most of the arrangements both of this world and of
the next. If all this were to come true (and things seemed very like
it), those friends who had neglected us in our adversity would not