And so the card house I have been so laboriously building up these two years with all manner of hard struggling will be tumbled down again, and my small light will be ignominiously snuffed out like that of better men...I can submit if the fates are too strong.  The world is no better than an arena of gladiators, and I, a stray savage, have been turned into it to fight my way with my rude club among the steel-clad fighters.  Well, I have won my way into the front rank, and ought to be thankful and deem it only the natural order of things if I can get no further.

[And again in a letter of July 6, 1853:—­]

I know that these three years have inconceivably altered me—­that from being an idle man, only too happy to flow into the humours of the moment, I have become almost unable to exist without active intellectual excitement.  I know that in this I find peace and rest such as I can attain in no other way.  From being a mere untried fledgling, doubtful whether the wish to fly proceeded from mere presumption or from budding wings, I have now some confidence in well-tried pinions, which have given me rank among the strongest and foremost.  I have always felt how difficult it was for you to realise all this—­how strange it must be to you that though your image remained as bright as ever, new interests and purposes had ranged themselves around it, and though they could claim no pre-eminence, yet demanded their share of my thoughts.  I make no apology for this—­it is man’s nature and the necessary influence of circumstances which will so have it; and depend, however painful our present separation may be, the spectacle of a man who had given up the cherished purpose of his life, the Esau who had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and with it his self-respect, would before long years were over our heads be infinitely more painful.  Depend upon it, the trust which you placed in my hands when I left you—­to choose for both of us—­has not been abused.  Hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties, my choice was a narrow one, and I was guided more by circumstances than my own free will.  Nevertheless the path has shown itself to be a fair one, neither more difficult nor less so than most paths in life in which a man of energy may hope to do much if he believes in himself, and is at peace within.

My course in life is taken.  I will not leave London—­I will make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some kind of pursuit connected with science, which is the thing for which nature has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for anything.  Bethink yourself whether you can cast aside all repining and all doubt, and devote yourself in patience and trust to helping me along my path as no one else could.  I know what I ask, and the sacrifice I demand, and if this were the time to use false modesty, I should say how little I have to offer in return...

I am full of faults, but I am real and true, and the whole devotion of an earnest soul cannot be overprized.