"A long silence followed, though I endeavored to look most humble and explanatory. At length the elder lady began a sort of indirect lecture on the impropriety of shocking religious impressions. I appealed to her impressions of me before I announced my name, and it required all the art I was master of to redeem an atom of good grace before we arrived at Exeter. Every attempt to defend or explain what I had done sent the old lady's face up to the window; but by the next morning, on her leaving the inn, she sent her compliments to me by my friend.
"I was much surprised at my reception at Exeter. I had not intended to stop there but a day, just to show myself to some of my old acquaintances, that they might see that I had not been metamorphosed into the old dragon about which they had heard so much. I find it impossible to get away as soon as I expected. This town is rapidly improving in knowledge, yet I mark with sorrowful emotion the hideous, unsocial, uncheerful and unhappy faces which religion generates, and I see anew the importance of what I have done, and what I intend to do for the improvement of the female mind. It is knowledge alone that can give real beauty to the face, as merely fair outline without knowledge to give it expression is but a cold and lifeless statue, and can charm none but weak minds; nor can dress make up for the deficiency which an ignorant face exhibits. It heightens them and forms a double deception. It deceives the wearer and he who is attracted by it, and decoys both into a snare that inevitably generates an unhappy life for which no external appearance can atone."
This sudden and unexpected liberation gave rise to some erroneous ideas. Some of Carlile's weaker-kneed friends did not hesitate to accuse him of some unworthy truckling to those in power in order to gain his liberty. This was his reply to these accusations:
"I gather from the correspondence of friends in various parts of the country that some wild notions are current as to the cause of my liberation. I answer all queries on the subject by referring friends to my past conduct, to that which has been visible, and by desiring them to listen to no tales about changes in my conduct. My path has been long marked out and straightly walked in; I shall neither go back nor turn aside after so complete a success as that which I have brought about."