1889 DEFENCE OF AGNOSTICISM 105 



back of the house, looking S.W. over open gardens 

 to the long line of downs which culminate in Beachy 

 Head, but with due provision against southerly gales 

 and excess of sunshine. 



On May 29 the builder's contract was accepted, 

 and for the rest of the year the progress of the house, 

 which was designed by his son-in-law, F. W. Waller, 

 afforded a constant interest. 



Meantime, with the improvement in his general 

 health, the old appetite for work returned with in- 

 creased and unwonted zest. For the first time in his 

 life he declares that he enjoyed the process of writing. 

 As he wrote somewhat later to his newly married 

 daughter from Eastbourne, where he had gone again 

 very weary the day after her wedding : " Luckily 

 the bishops and clergy won't let me alone, so I have 

 been able to keep myself pretty well amused in 

 replying." The work which came to him so easily 

 and pleasurably was the defence of his attitude of 

 agnosticism against the onslaught made upon it at 

 the previous Church Congress by Dr. Wace, the 

 Principal of King's College, London, and followed up 

 by articles in the Nineteenth Centmij from the pen of 

 Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. Laing, the effect of 

 which upon him he describes to Mr. Knowles on 

 December 30, 1888 :— 



I have been stirred up to the boiling pitch by Wace, 

 Laing, and Harrison in re Agnosticism, and I really can't 

 keep the lid down any longer. Are you minded to admit 

 a goring article into the February Nineteenth ? 



