 fruits.

A small incident, which need not be recorded, recalled to Elsmere's mind—after he had been working some six weeks in the district—the forgotten unwelcome fact that St. Wilfrid's was the very church where Newcome, first as senior curate and then as vicar, had spent those ten wonderful years into which Elsmere at Murewell had been never tired of inquiring. The thought of Newcome was a very sore thought. Elsmere had written to him announcing his resignation of his living immediately after his interview with the bishop. The letter had remained unanswered, and it was by now tolerably clear that the silence of its recipient meant a withdrawal from all friendly[Pg 472] relations with the writer. Elsmere's affectionate sensitive nature took such things hardly, especially as he knew that Newcome's life was becoming increasingly difficult and embittered. And it gave him now a fresh pang to imagine how Newcome would receive the news of his quondam friend's 'infidel propaganda,' established on the very ground where he himself had all but died for those beliefs Elsmere had thrown over.

But Robert was learning a certain hardness in this London life which was not without its uses to character. Hitherto he had always swum with the stream, cheered by the support of all the great and prevailing English traditions. Here, he and his few friends were fighting a solitary fight apart from the organised system of English religion and English philanthropy. All the elements of culture and religion already existing in the place were against them. The clergy of St. Wilfrid's passed them with cold averted eyes; the old and fainéant rector of the parish church very soon let it be known what he thought as to the taste of Elsmere's intrusion on his parish, or as to the eternal chances of those who might take either him or Edwardes as guides in matters religious. His enmity did Elgood Street no harm, and the pretensions of the Church, in this Babel of 20,000 souls, to cover the whole field, bore clearly no relation at all to the facts. But every little incident in this new struggle of his life cost Elsmere more perhaps than it would have cost other men. No part of it came easily to him. Only a high Utopian vision drove him on from day to day, bracing him to act and judge, if need be, alone and for himself, approved only by conscience and the inward voice.

'Tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled;'
and it was that moment by the river which worked in him through all the prosaic and perplexing details of
