She would have hoodwinked me, stopped my ears with cotton, and led
me in a string,--kind, careful soul!--if it had been reasonably safe on
a crowded pavement, so fearful was she lest I should be polluted by some
chance sight or sound of the Babylon which she feared and hated--almost as
much as she did the Bishops.
The only books which I knew were the Pilgrim's Progress and the Bible. The
former was my Shakespeare, my Dante, my Vedas, by which I explained every
fact and phenomenon of life. London was the City of Destruction, from
which I was to flee; I was Christian; the Wicket of the Way of Life I
had strangely identified with the turnpike at Battersea-bridge end; and
the rising ground of Mortlake and Wimbledon was the Land of Beulah--the
Enchanted Mountains of the Shepherds. If I could once get there I was
saved: a carnal view, perhaps, and a childish one; but there was a dim
meaning and human reality in it nevertheless.
As for the Bible, I knew nothing of it really, beyond the Old Testament.
Indeed, the life of Christ had little chance of becoming interesting to me.
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