believing in controlling spirits, or for that matter in her own spirit, yet speaks and writes such sensible and wise things, that we might almost say that one of her speeches or chapters contains more matter to benefit humanity than would equip a modern trance-speaker for an entire oratorical career."[28] I have sometimes wondered of late years whether, had I met her then or seen any of her writings, I should have become her pupil.  I fear not; I was still too much dazzled by the triumphs of Western Science, too self-assertive, too fond of combat, too much at the mercy of my own emotions, too sensitive to praise and blame.  I needed to sound yet more deeply the depths of human misery, to hear yet more loudly the moaning of “the great Orphan,” Humanity, to feel yet more keenly the lack of wider knowledge and of clearer light if I were to give effective help to man, ere I could bow my pride to crave admittance as pupil to the School of Occultism, ere I could put aside my prejudices and study the Science of the Soul.

The long-continued attempts of Sir Henry Tyler and his friends to stimulate persecutions for blasphemy at length took practical shape, and in July, 1882, Mr. Foote, the editor, Mr. Ramsey, the publisher, and Mr. Whittle, the printer of the Freethinker, were summoned for blasphemy by Sir Henry Tyler himself.  An attempt was made to involve Mr. Bradlaugh in the proceedings, and the solicitors promised to drop the case against the editor and printer if Mr. Bradlaugh would himself sell them some copies of the paper.  But however ready Mr. Bradlaugh had always shown himself to shield his subordinates by taking his sins on his own shoulders, he saw no reason why he should assume responsibility for a paper over which he had no control, and which was, he thought, by its caricatures, lowering the tone of Freethought advocacy and giving an unnecessary handle to its foes.  He therefore answered that he would sell the solicitors any works published by himself or with his authority, and sent them a catalogue of the whole of such works.  The object of this effort of Sir Henry Tyler’s was obvious enough, and Mr. Bradlaugh commented:  “The above letters make it pretty clear that Sir Henry W. Tyler having failed in his endeavour to get the science classes stopped at the Hall of Science, having also failed in his attempt to induce Sir W. Vernon Harcourt to prosecute myself and Mrs. Besant as editors and publishers of this journal, desires to make me personally and criminally responsible for the contents of a journal I neither edit nor publish, over which I have not a shadow of control, and in which I have not the smallest interest.  Why does Sir H.W.  Tyler so ardently desire to prosecute, me for blasphemy?  Is it because two convictions will under the 9th and 10th Will.  III. cap. 32, render me ‘for ever’ incapable of sitting in Parliament?” The Whitehall Review frankly put this forward as an object to be gained, and Mr. Bradlaugh was summoned to the Mansion