By tormenting attraction Godwin was often led to walk in the wealthy districts of London.  Why was no one of these doors open to him?  There were his equals; not in the mean streets where he dwelt.  There were the men of culture and capacity, the women of exquisite person and exalted mind.  Was he the inferior of such people?  By heaven, no!

He chanced once to be in Hyde Park on the occasion of some public ceremony, and was brought to pause at the edge of a gaping plebeian crowd, drawn up to witness the passing of aristocratic vehicles.  Close in front of him an open carriage came to a stop; in it sat, or rather reclined, two ladies, old and young.  Upon this picture Godwin fixed his eyes with the intensity of fascination; his memory never lost the impress of these ladies’ faces.  Nothing very noteworthy about them; but to Godwin they conveyed a passionate perception of all that is implied in social superiority.  Here he stood, one of the multitude, of the herd; shoulder to shoulder with boors and pick-pockets; and within reach of his hand reposed those two ladies, in Olympian calm, seeming unaware even of the existence of the throng.  Now they exchanged a word; now they smiled to each other.  How delicate was the moving of their lips!  How fine must be their enunciation!  On the box sat an old coachman and a young footman; they too were splendidly impassive, scornful of the multitudinous gaze.—­The block was relieved, and on the carriage rolled.

They were his equals, those ladies, merely his equals.  With such as they he should by right of nature associate.

In his rebellion, he could not hate them.  He hated the malodorous rabble who stared insolently at them and who envied their immeasurable remoteness.  Of mere wealth he thought not; might he only be recognised by the gentle of birth and breeding for what he really was, and be rescued from the promiscuity of the vulgar!

Yet at this time he was drawn into connection with the movement of popular Radicalism which revolts against religious respectability.  Inherited antipathy to all conventional forms of faith outweighed his other prejudices so far as to induce him to write savage papers for The Liberator.  Personal contact with artisan freethinkers was disgusting to him.  From the meeting of emancipated workmen he went away with scorn and detestation in his heart; but in the quiet of his lodgings he could sit down to aid their propaganda.  One explanation of this inconsistency lay in the fact that no other channel was open to his literary impulses.  Pure science could not serve him, for he had no original results to announce.  Pure literature seemed beyond his scope, yet he was constantly endeavouring to express himself.  He burned with the desire of fame, and saw no hope of achieving it save as an author. The Liberator would serve him as a first step.  In time he might get foothold in the monthly reviews, and see his name side by side with those of the leaders of thought.