He did the work himself. After many interviews, and a long correspondence
with him, Thomas Cooper changed his views, and has been lecturing and
preaching for many years as a Christian.] Who will denounce him as a vile
aristocrat, robbing the poor man of his Saviour--of the ground of all
democracy, all freedom, all association--of the Charter itself? _Oh, si
mihi centum voces et ferrea lingua!_ Think about _that_."

_January, 1850_.--"A thousand thanks for your letter, though it only shows
me what I have long suspected, that I know hardly enough yet to make the
book what it should be. As you have made a hole, you must help to fill it.
Can you send me any publication which would give me a good notion of the
Independents' view of politics, also one which would give a good notion of
the Fox-Emerson-Strauss school of Blague-Unitarianism, which is superseding
dissent just now. It was with the ideal of Calvinism, and its ultimate
bearing on the people's cause, that I wished to deal. I believe that there
must be internecine war between the people's church--_i.e._, the future
development of Catholic Christianity, and Calvinism even in its mildest
form, whether in the Establishment or out of it--and I have counted the
cost and will give every _party_ its slap in their turn. But I will alter,
as far as I can, all you dislike."

_August, 1850_.--"How do you know, dearest man, that I was not right in
making the Alton of the second volume different from the first? In showing
the individuality of the man swamped and warped by the routine of misery
and discontent? How do you know that the historic and human interest of the
book was not intended to end with Mackay's death, in whom old radicalism
dies, 'not having received the promises,' to make room for the radicalism
of the future? How do you know that the book from that point was not
intended to take a mythic and prophetic form, that those dreams come in for
the very purpose of taking the story off the ground of the actual into the