In ordinary cases the hue and cry after a supposed
offender is a matter of temporary operation; but ordinary cases formed
no standard for the colossal intelligence of Mr. Falkland. For the same
reason, London, which appears an inexhaustible reservoir of concealment
to the majority of mankind, brought no such consolatory sentiment to my
mind. Whether life were worth accepting on such terms I cannot
pronounce. I only know that I persisted in this exertion of my
faculties, through a sort of parental love that men are accustomed to
entertain for their intellectual offspring; the more thought I had
expended in rearing it to its present perfection, the less did I find
myself disposed to abandon it. Another motive, not less strenuously
exciting me to perseverance, was the ever-growing repugnance I felt to
injustice and arbitrary power.
The first evening of my arrival in town I slept at an obscure inn in the
borough of Southwark, choosing that side of the metropolis, on account
of its lying entirely wide of the part of England from which I came.
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