Etext of Autobiography And Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert.
By Mrs Gilbert, Fka Ann Taylor 
Edited by Josiah Gilbert.
Published by Henry S. King & Co. 
65 Cornhill, London.and 12 Paternoster Row, London.
1874.

Autobiography
And Other Memorials of
Mrs Gilbert, (Formerly Ann Taylor ).
Edited by Josiah Gilbert.

Author of "Cadore;or, Titian's Country," Etc., and Joint-author
Of "The Dolomite Mountains."

Volume I.
" Life, I repeat, is energy of Love,            
Divine or human; exercised in pain,         
In strife, and tribulation, and ordained       
If so approved and sanctified, to pass,       
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy."
WORDSWORTH.

All rights reserved.

PREFACE.

"Lord, what is Life? if spent with Thee
  In duty, praise, and prayer,
However short, or long it be
  We need but little care,
Because Eternity will last
When Life, and death itself are past."
HYMNS FOR INFANT MINDS.
                    
ANN TAYLOR was young when she penned the above stanza. She
little thought that she was writing her epitaph. It was not a short,
but a long life that was destined for her; and when at the age of
eighty-five she was laid in her grave, they who knew her best,
thought no words could be more fitting for a final memorial than
those in which she had summed up life as "duty, praise, and
prayer."

To present a true picture of such a life to the reader is the object of
the following pages. It was duty as she believed, though of an
ordinary sort, that withdrew Ann Taylor from the literary career
that brought others of her family into note; and while it will be due
to her memory to point out the large share she had in works long
before the public, and to rescue wise and thoughtful words upon
many topics from the oblivion of manuscript, the chief
justification of this memoir is sought in the life it portrays a life
very active, very useful, and, despite inevitable sorrows, very
happy. 

The Autobiography with which the work opens, passes to some
extent over the same ground as the memoir of Jane Taylor by her
brother; but as a personal narrative of an almost unique family life,
it is told very differently, and with large additions. It was
addressed, it will be seen, to her children, and some discursiveness
has been corrected, but its character of "Domestic Recollections"
should be borne in mind. Yet the quaint personages, with their no
less quaint surroundings, which appear in its pages, the quiet
English places, half town, half village, where they lived, reproduce
the old Puritan life homely, frugal, studious, which is perhaps only
known to most of us through the art of the novelist; and it may be
interesting to compare the real with the ideal picture. A later phase
of Nonconformity, also, is displayed in the other portion of the
work. 

The Autobiography ceases early, but it is believed that the loss will
be compensated by the brightness and freshness of the extracts
from correspondence, of which the rest is mainly composed. A few
selections, poetical and other, taken from a mass of material, as
illustrative of character or circumstance, complete the portrait of a
clear and active mind, and show the outlook of their author upon
great questions, both of this day and of every day. 

MARDEN ASH, May 1, 1874.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

TO enable the reader to follow with more advantage the
"Domestic Recollections" of my mother, I will extract from some
notes upon the family history, drawn up by my mother's father, a
few particulars, of which, had they been at hand, she would
probably have availed herself. They illustrate the formation of
hereditary tastes, and account for the adoption of certain family
names. 

Her grandfather, the first Isaac Taylor, was the son of a
brassfounder at Worcester, and while learning his father's business,
early showed a talent for Engraving. Upon the death of his father,
who in some way had fallen into poverty, the young Isaac came to
London, giving half-a-crown for leave to walk by the side of the
stage waggon. In London he first entered the cutlery works of
Josiah Jefferys, then employing sixty or seventy men in his
business, and who afterwards retired to Shenfield, in Essex, where
he died. A Nathaniel Jefferys, his brother, was at the same time
Goldsmith and Cutler to the King; and Thomas, another brother,
who became Geographer to the King, married a sister of the Mr
Raikes of Gloucester, well known as the founder of Sunday
Schools.

Josiah Jefferys had, at the age of eighteen, married a Miss
Hackshaw, aged sixteen, as she was on her way to market. Her
father, then a man of substance, with a rent roll from an estate near
Raleigh of ś1000 per annum, was extremely angry, and told her
that, being his child, he would not turn her out of doors, but that if
she ever went beyond them she should never return. Upon these
strange terms she remained two years under his roof, when her
brother interceded, and persuaded her father to set the young
husband up in business as a cutler, in which, as appears above, he
prospered. Her father, on the contrary Robert Hackshaw after
mortgaging his estate, fell further into misfortune, and died of
grief. The marriage was twice celebrated, the first having taken
place before registers were kept. This young wife, when a child,
sitting upon the knee of Dr Watts, received from him a copy of his
Divine Songs for Children, which eventually came into the
possession of the Taylor family; for the Isaac Taylor who had
walked from Worcester in due time married her daughter, Sarah
Hackshaw Jefferys, but not till after the family had retired into
Essex, for it took place at Shenfield Church, May 9, 1754. 

The Hackshaws (or Hawkshaws) were either of Dutch extraction,
or belonged to the Puritan emigration in Holland, for the father of
the above-named Robert Hackshaw, was purveyor to King William
III., and came over with him to England. He was called the
"Orange skipper," from having been employed, before the
Revolution, to carry despatches backwards and forwards,
concealed in his walking-cane. 

Isaac Taylor had engraved crests and other devices at Worcester,
and so distinguished himself in that department in Josiah Jeffery's
works, that it led to his adopting art engraving, then recently
introduced, as a profession, to which he added presently the
business of an art publisher. His house became in this way the
resort of several personages of note in art and literature.
Goldsmith, the illustrations to whose works are often signed "Isaac
Taylor," was frequently there, and upon one occasion, when
consulted upon the title of a book with an apology for troubling
him upon so trifling a matter, replied, "the title, sir! why the title is
everything." Bartolozzi, Fuseli, and Smirke, were among his
friends, and he was one of the original founders of the Royal
Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain, from which
sprang the Royal Academy. The celebrated Woollett was for many
years secretary to the Society, and Isaac Taylor eventually
succeeded him in that office. Thomas Bewick was his valued
pupil, who in his turn speaks of him in his autobiography, as "my
warm friend and patron Isaac Taylor." And again, "he was in his
day accounted the best engraver of embellishments for books,
most of which he designed himself. The frontispiece to the first
edition of Cunningham's poems was one of his early productions,
and at that time my friend Pollard and myself thought it was the
best thing ever done." The most important work executed by this
Isaac Taylor was a large plate, the "Flemish Collation," after
Ostade. Howard the philanthropist took such notice of one of his
daughters, when a child, that in later years she named a son after
him Howard Hinton, an eminent Baptist minister lately deceased.
Of the three sons of Isaac Taylor, Charles, Isaac, and Josiah, the
second was the father of the subject of these Memorials. 

The long association with metal working, of both the Jefferys and
the Taylor families, throws an interesting light upon the engraving
talent which both the first, and the second Isaac Taylor, my
mother's father, developed, and the connection with Holland and
the Revolution suggests early preferences for Nonconformity.
[ED.]

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. LONDON AND LAVENHAM.
The Review of Life Her Father's Character Her Mother's History
The Old House at Lavenham The Meeting-house and its
Congregation Home Ways and Home Education Early Scribbling.   

CHAPTER II. LAVENHAM.
Rural Holidays Castle Building First Visit to London Artistic Work
at Home Her Father's Dangerous Illness The New House Youthful
Gaities and Nervous Fears Political Disturbances State of Religion
Her Father enters the Nonconformist Ministry Removal from
Lavenham.

CHAPTER III.COLCHESTER.
The Colchester House Colchester Town Colchester People The
Work Room, and Engraving Mysteries Youthful Friends First
Appearance in Print Domestic Economy A Minister's Wife
Umbelliferous Society 

CHAPTER IV. COLCHESTER.
Her Father's Scientific Lectures Constable's Country The Minor's
Pocket Book Lawful Amusements Forbeses and Conders The
Stapletons Sudbury Visits The Strutt Family Scarlet Fever in the
House Religious Conviction The Editor of Calmet Family Festivals
Jane Taylor's Jeu d'esprit,

CHAPTER V. COLCHESTER AND ONGAR.
Application from Darton and Harvey Isaac's First Piece Active
Literary Work Terror of Invasion, and Flight to Lavenham Private
Theatricals Mournful Deaths Interview with Joanna Baillie Evils
of Diary-Making The Brothers Remove to London Approaching
Change Removal to Ongar Review Writing Ilfracombe, 

CHAPTER VI. LITERARY CHARACTER.
Ann and Jane compared The domestic character of Ann's Poetry
Specimens of its Arch Drollery The Tragic Element and Sara
Coleridge's Criticism Observations upon Ann's Hymns The Poem
"My Mother" and its history Scott, Southey, and Edgeworth Ann
Taylor's Prose,  

CHAPTER VII. ILFRACOMBE AND ONGAR
Ongar Scenery The Winter at Ilfracombe A Visitor and an offer of
Marriage Mr Gunn and his Sailors Return to Ongar Engagement to
Mr Gilbert Marriage; and Letter from her Mother,

CHAPTER VIII. ROTHERHAM.
Yorkshire Life Salome The Cookery Book The Allied Sovereigns
in London Visit to the New Home at Ongar "Eclectic" Articles Her
Mother's Authorship Prospect for the Autumn Birth of a Son
Illness of her Father Nursery Delights,  

CHAPTER IX. ROTHERHAM.
Another Ongar visit Her Little Boy's Accomplishments Criticism
upon her Sister's Poems Change of Residence A Welcome to a
Birthday Visit from Jane and Isaac Excursions to York and
Stockport The Break up from Rotherham and Removal to Hull,     

DOMESTIC RECOLLECTIONS.

CHAPTER I. LONDON AND LAVENHAM.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I.
The Review of Life Her Father's Character Her Mother's History
The Old House at Lavenham The Meeting-house and its
Congregation Home Ways and Home Eduction Early Scribbling.

DOMESTIC RECOLLECTIONS.

CHAPTER I. LONDON AND LAVENHAM. 1782-1789.

"My father! Well the name he bore,
For never man was father more." 
ANN GILBERT. 

"And found myself in full conventicle.
 To wit, in Zion Chapel meeting."         
R. BROWNING. 

AND now, my dear children, I am not about to enter the
confessional. Such of my faults as you may not have discovered,
may as well remain in what obscurity they can, and I feel that I do
not here afford you, in these respects, the full benefit of my
experience. Many you know, I wish you did not; forgive and forget
them as soon as you are able, though doubtless your training has
suffered more or less from some. The faults of a parent can seldom
be so dammed up as to leave no taint in the stream, or feculence
on the shores. 

It is my heartfelt conviction, on the closest inspection of my
circumstances and character, that, excepting a few very few
external trials, my unhappiness, whenever I have not been happy,
has arisen solely from myself, or, at least, that it might have been
corrected by a better state of things within. A pervading influential
Christianity would, I am persuaded, have rendered my life one of
the happiest possible, for I have ever been surrounded with the
materials for happiness, many and abundant. 

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; I have had, almost
to my heart's desire, a goodly heritage; and as at present most of
you enjoy similar advantages, I would press it upon you, with
maternal earnestness, more fully to improve them than I have
done, and not to suffer impatience, pride, self-will, indolence, or
any other of our bosom enemies, to slip in between you and the
cheerful enjoyment of the blessings surrounding you. Make the
most of what God has given you, and you may be happy if you
will. 

You have often appeared interested when I have related particulars
of my early history, and it seems but right that you, who (as I have
said) are almost certainly either better or worse for my habits and
tendencies, should know something of the circumstances amongst
which they were formed, if only as finger-posts on your own road. 

It has sometimes surprised me to perceive to how great a degree
you were ignorant of things and events so long familiar to my own
recollections, but of course you can know on these subjects only
what you are told, and presuming that to know more may be either
amusing or useful, I have long entertained a wish to leave for you a
brief outline of what I have been, or felt, with the various  turns
and interferences of Providence by which I have become what you
find me. 

To review my life will not in all respects be a pleasant occupation,
for it presents much that I would fain erase. The close inspection
of my character which it calls for gives me anything but
satisfaction; but when I refer to the course through which I have
been conducted, and the flowery fences by which I have at all
times been hedged in, my causes for gratitude are more than I can
enumerate, and greater than I can express. 

Few, perhaps owe so much certainly few more to Providential
arrangements than I do; my intimate associates have always been,
in one respect or another, better than myself not all in everything,
but each in some things; so that there has been a continually
ascending influence acting upon me, and counteracting, in some
degree, less favourable circumstances or tendencies. 

Among these, the mercies of my position, I must place first the
personal history and singular characters of my dear parents, of
whom it would delight me to present you with a graphic
portraiture. What little you know of them was not sufficient to
furnish you with a correct idea, nor could you form one without
knowing also the disadvantages with which severally they had to
contend. 

Your dear grandfather was an unusually single-hearted man and
Christian. His life till nearly thirty was spent in London, but he
caught not a taint from its atmosphere. So long as he remained at
home his father, a man of sense and ability, and a well-known
artist of the time, was not, it seemed, under the influence of
Christian principle, though a strictly moral man; and he exhibited
towards  his family an austere reserve which was little calculated
to awaken the domestic affections to genial life. 

His mother, possessing no small share of practical good sense, and
real concern for the interests of her children, was yet so more than
occupied in the labours of rearing them, and withal of a temper so
heedless of the graces of life, that it seemed scarcely possible for
kind and tender dispositions to expand under her influence; but my
father not only revered, but as his nature could not help, loved her
also. Her will was law, and in many respects her family reaped the
advantage of such a parent, but it is perhaps surprising that a heart
so warm as his, should have been trained under her hand. His
willingness, docility, and obedience were a little "put upon" while
a youth; he was made something like the "fag" of the family; but
so great was his pleasure in serving at all times, and in all ways,
those by whom he was surrounded, that it was less irksome to him
than it would be to many. 

At thirteen he commenced a life which became one of diffusive
piety. At sixteen he joined the church under the Rev. Mr Webb of
Fetter Lane, and from those early years, till he went down to the
grave, at seventy-one, his character was one beautiful progress
through the benignant graces of Christianity. 

His love of knowledge was early, strong, and universal. Nothing
was uninteresting to him that he had opportunity to acquire, and
when acquired his delight was to communicate. Apt to teach he
certainly was, and ingenious as apt; all his methods were
self-devised, and the life of few men devoted to teaching as a
profession, would have accomplished more than he attained by
husbanding the half hours of his own. Early hours and elastic
industry were the "natural magic" by which his multitudinous
objects were pursued, and labours performed. 

Whatever I possess of knowledge came from his treasury, and far
more than is now mine, for many engagements, and a memory
never good, and perhaps in childhood too little cultivated, have
deprived me of much. Too little cultivated, I say, because my dear
mother having suffered from injudicious exactions upon memory
when a child, erred perhaps in training her children in the other
extreme. As far as I recollect, we were never required to learn
anything by heart! 

It was my father's habit, whenever a question arose in conversation
on points of science or history which we could not accurately
determine, to refer at the moment to some authority the lexicon,
the gazetteer, the encyclop‘dia, or anything from which the facts
could be gained; so that much was in this way imbibed by his
children without labour of any kind, and at the expense only of
some little impatience at a digression with which they would at the
time have been willing to dispense. "Line upon line," was,
however, in this way gradually traced and deepened. Method,
arrangement, regularity in everything, were the characteristics of
his mind; as were a tranquil hoping for, and believing in the best,
those of his heart. 

The future he could at all times cheerfully commit to his heavenly
Father, the present had ever some bright spot for which to be
thankful, and on this his eye, as by a natural attraction, fixed itself,
while his wit or humour could strike a spark out of the dullest
circumstances.

The two words which he adopted as his daily guide in education,
were mild, but firm; and he was fitted by natural disposition for
both mildness and firmness. He was not easily moved from an
opinion once formed, but the kindness of his heart, and the
sobriety of his judgment, habitually prevented him from forming
hard or unsound ones. 

Few, perhaps, have ever moved in active life for seventy years,
retaining a tendency to judge so favourably of all he met with.
Hope and cheerfulness were as the air he breathed, and these were
confirmed and rendered habitual principles, by a faith in the
providence and the promises of God, often tried, but never
observed to fail. His activity was untiring, and stimulated by a
glowing kindliness it enabled him to do with his might for all
whom he could benefit, whatsoever his hand found to do. 

He was never a clog on plans of usefulness, or even of pleasure.
His heart was love, and his life a holiday. For nearly half a century
he was the lover as well as the husband, alive to all the
impressions of tenderness, and constantly devising with
considerate affection pleasant little surprises for my dear mother.
Her forty years of incessant bodily suffering afforded ample field
for such a heart to adorn with the flowers and evergreens of love,
and with ingenious tenderness he did so to the last. 

As a youth, he had accustomed himself to rise early, but the habit
declined through disturbed nights during the infancy of his
children. After a few years, it was renewed and never abandoned,
and, if I am not mistaken, it was by  the following incident that he
was induced to return to six o'clock as the commencement of his
day. He had received a call from some poor minister, with a
request that he would purchase from him a small hymn-book,
beautifully bound in morocco; the price was half a guinea, a larger
sum than he could prudently afford, but his open heart could not
refuse the aid that was asked for in this form, and the little volume
proved, in the end, of incalculable value to him, for, sensible of his
indiscretion, he resolved to cover the loss by making a longer day
for labour. This, though constitutionally disposed to sleep, he
resolutely accomplished, starting from his bed at a quarter before
six every morning, till within a short period of his death. It was not
managed without difficulty. At first, an alarum clock at the head of
his bed was sufficient, but becoming accustomed to the monotony,
he placed a pair of tongs across the weight of the alarum, so
disposed, that when it began to move, the sudden fall of the tongs
would surely move him also. * 

My father's habits of devotion formed a valuable part of his
example. Rising thus early, the time from six to seven o'clock was
always spent in his closet enclosed by double doors. But though
thus secluded, and in a remote part of the house, we were, at times,
near enough, in a room below, to be aware of the earnestness of
his prayers, which were uttered aloud. He always preferred
articulate prayer, and when retirement can really be secured, it is a
habit I should warmly recommend. It prevents, in some degree, the
vagrancy of thought which so often interferes with mental prayer,
and it reacts upon the mind, deepening the impressions from which
it springs. * I would also, and with more solicitude, urge the habit
of stated prayer. The heart is so apt to slide from under its
intentions, if not compacted by the regularity of habit, that it is
rarely safe to trust them; every hour brings its hindrance, and so
often in the shape of all but needful business that "the path to the
bush" will, in most cases, be overgrown, if not trodden at the
stated period. 

We may deceive ourselves with the belief that we do pray
regularly, because we wish and intend to do so, but on many a day,
I fear we should search in vain for the act, unless reminded of it by
the hour. It is true that a perfunctory formality may be thus
induced, but the benefits, as far as my own experience or
observation extends, exceed greatly the disadvantages. It is "a
world of compromise," and for this reason, we are exhorted to
watch as well as to pray. 

After a day of continued labour, such as my father's always was, he
was again in his closet from eight till nine; occasionally when
work had to be sent off by the night mail for London (he then
living in the country), he might be prevented from devoting the full
hour, but I do not remember the time when the season of
retirement was wholly omitted. 

How much of the excellence of his own character, of the
providential mercy that so often appeared for him, and may I not
add, how many of the blessings enjoyed by his children and by
theirs, may not have been the gracious answer to this life of
supplication? 

It was not likely that a youth, warm with so many affections,
should be long content with domestic solitude. He was, indeed, but
a youth, and his prospects were not such as in these days of aim
and show would have admitted the thought of a wife, as prudent,
or even possible. His early wish to devote himself to the ministry,
had been frustrated by an illness of such severity and continuance,
as to destroy his hopes of study, and to unfit him for its labours. 

Lodgings which had been taken for him by his mother at Islington
then quite a country place and horse exercise, contributed to his
recovery; and he then reverted to his profession, that of an
engraver, for which he had been educated under his father, who
was among the first to execute book plates respectably. * 

At twenty-two, my father married, and the income on which he
calculated that he could live with comfort, consisted of a half a
guinea certain for three days' work in each week, supplied to him
by his elder brother, Charles, afterwards known as the "learned
editor of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible," who was, at the time,
in business for himself as an engraver and publisher, and so much
as he could earn during the remaining three days, when he was at
liberty to work on his own account. This, with thirty pounds in
hand, was his independency; my mother's dowry being one
hundred pounds stock, bequeathed to her by her grandfather, with
furniture supplied by her mother, sufficient for the pleasant first
floor at Islington they were to occupy. * 

It delights me to revert to this day of small things, and to trace the
goodness and mercy which did follow these dear, simple-hearted
parents of mine all the days of their life, till they were called to
dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. 

My dear mother was a character more peculiar, and her
disadvantages had been greater than those of my father. The
sensibility of her frame, both mental and bodily, was extreme; her
affections were strong and lively, and her sufferings (irrespective
of bodily pain) from the sorrows and bereavements of her
seventy-two years, proportionably intense. Her mother's father, the
son of a clergyman at Beverley, had been ruined in some building
speculation at York, and her mother, a beautiful girl of sixteen,
was sent off alone on the top of the York coach for London, with, I
know not, what prospect of result, except that she resided for a
time with a family in Kensington Square. 

By some accident, her favourite brother had been prevented from
seeing her off, but ran after the coach, and was just able to wave
his hand to her as it turned a corner. It was the last she ever saw of
him, or of any of her family; separation then was separation
indeed! She married early a Mr Martin, the son of an estate agent
at Kensington. 

My mother was the eldest of two children, and at six years old lost
her father, who died of fever at twenty-nine. Of him I know little
except that he was one of Mr Whitfield's early converts, and thus
happily prepared for early death. But he was probably alone in his
religious preferences, for upon one occasion having taken his little
girl to hear Mr Whitfield, she suddenly stood up in the pew and
exclaimed, "what have you brought me here for, among a pack of
Whitfieldites?"

His anxiety for my mother was more lively than discreet. He
thought it wise to exercise her infant patience by inflictions which
she recollected as producing paroxysms of anguish. He once called
her to see a new and favourite toy thrown on the fire, hoping in
this way to induce a salutary self-control! Such measures could not
but exasperate instead of soothe the excitability of her
temperament; but nevertheless, the sensitive child entertained for
him a strength of attachment much above her years. On the night
of his death she dreamed that she was in a desolate and shattered
dwelling, through the rents of which she could see the stars;
suddenly among them her father's form appeared, departing
upward in a  chariot, by gestures taking leave of her, and
encouraging her to follow. On waking, she was told that he was
dead, and to the excess of her grief her life was nearly sacrificed;
nor did she through her more than threescore years and ten fail to
commemorate the 13th of February, the anniversary of her loss.

On this first sorrow she was removed from her mother's house near
Gray's Inn, to that of her paternal grandfather at Kensington, for
change of air. There her health was soon renovated, but she fell
under injudicious training, a mixture of weak indulgence with
uninviting instruction. Yet her attachment to Kensington was
extreme, and she regarded it as an Elysium to her life's end. *
Home had, indeed, become no longer home. Her mother, a very 
beautiful woman, married again, but not long afterwards lost her
second husband, and married a third. The result was an increasing
family, and the solitary little girl was made to suffer in their
bitterness most of the sorrows of such a situation. Even her mother
did not defend her from the selfishness of a stepfather, and the
oppression of his children. She was the slave of all; she seemed
abandoned, with scarcely an eye to watch, or a hand to guide yet,
who that should trace that young life to its close but would
thankfully acknowledge an Eye that did watch, a Hand that did
guide! 

A day-school a good one, as day-schools were a hundred years ago
afforded all the education that as such she enjoyed, but her
character was too original and interesting to escape attention, and
she attracted the notice and kind regard of several intelligent
persons, who perceived her ability and aptitude to learn, and by the
loan of books, and other means, awakened the dormant energies of
her spirit, excited a thirst for knowledge, and raised her by
imperceptible degrees above the brothers and sisters who were
allowed to tyrannise over her; and on whom, nevertheless, she
lavished a warm affection, afterwards repaid by the honest love of
some of them. 

She very early discovered expertness at her pen, and its poetic and
often satirical effusions soon gained her a local celebrity. My
father was one of a group of young men occasionally visiting at her
mother's house, but their first approach to each other, if such it
might be called, was when at some breaking up of the school he
attended, she was the admiring spectator of his receiving a silver
pen (a rarer thing then than now) after reciting, with applause, a
piece from Shakespeare.

They were only children then, and a more important incident was
the exercise of his skill in engraving her initials upon the silver
shield in front of the beautiful little teapot, still in our possession,
and in which he deposited a copy of verses upon returning it to her.
These led to a smart rejoinder, and that to a paper war which, for a
time, made the gossip of the little circle, till it was terminated by a
treaty of peace, never afterwards infringed. 

But interesting as was my mother's character, and attractive to
many, some of them literary men, who would fain have rivalled
my father in her affections, she was but ill-furnished with that
practical knowledge of the details of housekeeping, without which
marriage involves a girl, not in a rank above domestic
management, in the deepest anxiety. When she married, at the age
of twenty-three, she had everything to learn, and most sedulously,
with the resolve of a sensible woman, and the diligence of a
conscientious one, did she set herself to learn. She became an
excellent housekeeper, for with a humily that often surprised me,
she would accept the smallest particulars of information from the
youngest or the humblest. To the latest hour of my observation at
home she had always the rare wisdom to acknowledge ignorance. 

On their wedding day, April 18, 1781, my parents entered their
first home, in a house standing back from the street, and exactly
opposite Islington Church. It was a first floor only, but from the
back room, the best one, there was a view over an extent of
country, including the Highgate Hills, and on the day of their
marriage, though  so early in the year, a vine was in full leaf over
their windows. There, on the 30th of January 1782, on which day
my youthful father reached his twenty-third year, I was born; and
on the 23d of September the year following, their second daughter,
Jane Taylor, known, perhaps, I might say, on the four continents,
and known only for good, came into the world; but at this time
they had removed for the convenience of business to Red Lion
Street, Holborn, then a sufficiently quiet place. 

Here their first son, and third child, was born; and here, scarcely
allowing herself an hour of recreation either for body or mind,
practising the utmost economy, and with her children filling every
thought of her heart, my poor mother broke down in health, and
might have surrendered herself to be the mere drudge of her
family, had not a wise friend suggested to her that it would be well
if her husband found in her a companion, as well as a housekeeper
and nurse. She took the hint immediately, and resolved to secure
the higher happiness that had nearly escaped her. For this purpose
she commenced the practice of reading aloud at meals, the only
time she could afford for mental improvement, and for nearly
half-a-century it supplied her daily pleasure, while it sustained the
native power of her mind. 

But now the rapidly increasing family, and its consequent
expenses, suggested the desirableness of removing to the country,
and my dear parents, young, poor, loving, simple-minded, with
nothing to call experience, resolved to transplant their household
to what then appeared a remote and dreary distance from every
relative or friend. They had neither of them been more than twenty
miles from London in their lives, and my father, always
methodical, obtained a list from Homerton College of all the
ministers supplied from that Institution to within a hundred miles
from the metropolis, and wrote, I believe, to all of them as to the
cheapness of rent and of provisions in each locality, with some
other domestic items. One of these applications reached a minister
at Baddow when a cousin of his, the Rev. W. Hickman, of
Lavenham in Suffolk, happened to be visiting him. They laughed
over the questions propounded, which they attributed to some
antiquated bachelor, but Mr Hickman remembered a house at
Lavenham, which he thought he could recommend, and, writing to
that effect, with other suitable inducements, my father undertook
the formidable journey of sixty-three miles to reconnoitre. 

He decided upon the venture, but the trial to the feelings of my
dear mother was extreme. The removal to such a distance from all
she loved was an anguish almost as much as she could endure.
Owing to great susceptibility of nature, nervous, anxious, and
foreboding, and with these tendencies during the greater part of
her life aggravated by incessant pain, yet there was in her character
a steady strength at hand for emergencies, which sometimes
carried her through difficulties under which it might have been
supposed a mind like hers would reel. 

It was in June 1786, the fine old-fashioned weather of the
eighteenth century, as my memory pictures it, that the little colony
set forth I well remember the freshness of that six o'clock on a
summer's morning in a hackney coach for the stage. My father had
gone before to Lavenham to receive and arrange the furniture, and
never was "Queen's Decorator" more busy, more anxious, (in some
respects more capable,) than he that everything should appear in
tempting order, and in the best style of which it was susceptible.
His materials, indeed, were few, but his taste and contrivance
inexhaustible. The house, which a cottager described as "the first
grand house in Shilling Street," was indeed so, compared with
former residences.

It was the property of, and had been inhabited by a clergyman. On
the ground floor were three parlours, two kitchens, and a dairy,
together with three other rooms never inhabited; and above them
were six large bedrooms. An extensive garden, well planted, lay
behind. A straight broad walk through the middle was fifty-two
yards in length, with an open summer-house on rising ground at
one end, and ha-ha fence separating it from a meadow, of which
we had the use, at the other. There was also a large yard, with a
pig-stye, uninhabited, till my sister Jane and I cleared it out for the
purpose of dwelling in it ourselves. It was a substantial little
building of brick, but, having no windows, and the door swinging
from the top, it was somewhat incommodious, yet there, after
lessons, we passed many a delightful hour. 

For this spacious domain, (house and garden I mean, not the
pig-stye), it will scarcely be credited that my father paid a rent of
only six pounds a-year, but by such a circumstance the perfect
out-of-the-wayness of the situation may be conceived. Neither
coach road nor canal approached it, though I remember that the
advantage the latter would be to the little town was often
discussed. The postman's cart, a vehicle covered in for passengers,
made its enlivening entr‚e every day from Sudbury, seven  miles
distant, about noon; and the London waggon nodded and grated in,
I forget how often, or rather how seldom, I believe about once a
week. 

In a neighbour's large old fashioned kitchen I remember a painting
representing the church standing in the middle of the town, and it
must have been a place of some importance when that was the
case; but, when we knew it, the church was quite at the extremity
to the north, where the Sudbury road entered the High Street,
which long street, at the further end, issued upon the road to Bury
St Edmunds, ten miles off. The church was a noble Gothic edifice,
built by the Earls of Oxford. Many of the details were drawn and
engraved by my father, and published in one volume by his
brother, then an architectural publisher in London. One of my
brothers and two little sisters lie in the churchyard near one of the
doors. The rector and curate of our day were of the old school, *
free livers, yet religiously hostile to the little band of dissenters
who occupied a small "meeting-house" that nestled under the
shade of some fine walnut trees, standing back from the street. In
this reviled conventicle (for the spirit of "Church and King" was
the demon of the neighborhood, or rather of the times), there
assembled a friendly and intelligent congregation. It was generally
well filled, and for my own pleasure, more than for yours, shall I
record the names, still familiar to me, of those who chiefly
composed it? 

Well then, first, were Mr and Mrs Perry Branwhite, with their
daughter Sally, one of my first playfellows, and their sons Nathan
and Peregrine. Mr Branwhite was a quaint, upright, stiff, but
somewhat poetic schoolmaster, having charge of a branch of St
Ann's Charity School, located at that distance from London for the
advantage of cheap provisions. I say poetic, because he had done
the Copernican system into rhyme, printed on a large sheet and
framed. By him and his, four or five seats were occupied. 

Next to them sat Mr Stribbling, the blacksmith, and family, plain
respectable people, though he, to my youthful eyes, was very ugly.
He was certainly stone deaf, notwithstanding which latter
disadvantage he attended very regularly, troubling his minister
occasionally by complaining of him as a "legal preacher," on the
ground that he selected "Arminian texts." These at every service
were looked out for him by his children, and upon them alone he
founded his suspicions of Mr Hickman's orthodoxy. "Ann and
Jane" sat vis-…-vis upon little cross seats at the ends of the next
pew, and had ample opportunity thereby of forming an opinion
upon Mr Stribbling's personal attractions.

Beyond our's was the seat of Mr Meeking, the baker, a personage
who occupies a grateful niche in the recollections of my
childhood. He was a good-natured, fresh-coloured, somewhat
rotund old man, with blue eyes, a light flaxen wig curled all round
in double rows, and a beard duly shaven once a week. He kept a
bakehouse of local celebrity, and with it a small shop, amply
provided with that nondescript variety of grocery, drapery, and
haberdashery, farthing cakes, and penny bindings, suitable for
humble customers, or needed at a pinch. * Three sons and two
daughters, all grown up, at least so they appeared to us little
people, composed his family, and the old-fashioned kitchen, or
house-place, in which they lived, is fresh in my memory as the
scene of warm and bountiful hospitality to all, and of indulgence to
us little girls, who frequently found our way there at times of any
domestic discomfort. The floor of this kitchen was of brick,
uncarpeted, one small window (of course you do not care about it,
but please let me tell you) looked into the street, and a very large
one opposite, with diamond panes and brick mullions, into the
garden. There was a door from the shop, another towards the
parlour, and a third large heavy square one, studded with
iron-headed nails, leading to the garden and orchard. But,
notwithstanding, this various provision for the admission of fresh
air, nothing could exceed the comfort and glow of the
chimney-corner, large enough to admit the bulky arm-chair of the
master on one side, and a seat for small folk on the other; the
whole hedged in by an ample screen. 

And, O, the piles of hot toast, thick, heaped, and sodden with
butter, that used morning and evening to crown the iron footman in
front of the fire! toast not cut from a modern neat tin-baked loaf,
but from such a loaf a rugged mountain! Here "Nancy and Jenny,"
as we were called, were always, and heartily welcome, or indeed
to anything we could contrive to wish for; and in this friendly
circle my sister was fairly released from the timidity that
concealed the rich store of humour  in her arch little nature, and
became the centre of fun and frolic. * To the wise restraint and
plain fare, and limited indulgences of home, Mr Meeking's
chimney corner afforded the widest contrast; and the good-natured
kindness, less judicious than generous, which always greeted us
there, placed our occasional visits among the red-letter days of our
calendar. 

Once a year, somewhere about Christmas, the "best parlour" was
duly warmed and inhabited. The young men were musical, there
were several in the congregation who could either sing or play, or
liked to hear others who could, and on these occasions they would
get up something like a concert, where a bassoon, played by the
eldest son, with sundry flutes and clarionets, afforded pleasant
amusement to as many of the "friends" as could be crowded in. A
piano was at that time quite beyond the Lavenham style, though I
remember a spinnet or harpsichord in the best parlour of some
other friends, presently to be mentioned. 

My dear mother had always the strongest objection to leaving her
little girls to the care of servants, and seldom visited where we
were not invited, we were but two, not troublesome, perhaps
something of favourites, so that completely social as these and
similar parties were, we were often admitted to them at an age
when now we should scarcely have emerged from the nursery. But
nurseries at Lavenham, and at that time of day, I do not remember.
The parlour and the best parlour were all that was known beside
the kitchens, and thus parents and children formed happily but one
circle. 

Of course it was necessary under the circumstances that the latter
should be submissive to good regulation, or domestic comfort
must have been sacrificed; but my father and mother were soon
noted as good managers of their children; for little as either of
them had experienced a wise education themselves, they had
formed a singularly strong resolve to train their young ones with
the best judgement they could exercise, and not to suffer
humoured children to disturb either themselves or their friends.
There is scarcely an expression so fraught to my earliest
recollection with ideas of disgrace and misery as that of a
"humoured child," and I should have felt truly ashamed to exhibit
one of my own at my father's table. 

Yet, I can only say that it has been my endeavour to steer clear of
this evil. It is inexpressibly difficult, pressed by daily business and
perpetual interruption, to judge correctly of the course we are
pursuing, or to retrace it if in error. On this account I should
recommend every burdened mother to allow herself an occasional
visit away from home without her children. She will then be much
better able to review her habits and plans, and, if needful, to
reform them, than while surrounded by the din, and borne down by
the pressure of daily employments. 

She will look at herself and her proceedings, as from a distance,
and sometimes in the solitude of the chamber, or the garden, will
find it no unhealthy exercise to describe herself aloud. Many
things look unexpectedly ugly when put into words; and in order to
derive unadulterated benefit, so far as may be, she will take care at
such times to keep aloof from the excellences. In other families
also she may silently observe what is right or what is wrong, and
amend her own doings accordingly. A degree of freshness is
imparted to both body and mind during such a process, and
probably she will go in the strength of that meat many days. 

In rearing a family it is scarcely till the youngest has been
educated, and often not then, that we come to a satisfactory
conclusion respecting the course most desirable to pursue. The
elder ones may have been sacrificed in part to inexperience, and
the younger to burden and pressure. 

Happy the mother who can hold an even balance between the strict
and the lenient, for, perhaps, on this ability depends the characters
of her children more than on any other part of her conduct. The
aim is all I can boast of; to inspire the confidence of love by
kindness, and to secure obedience by adhering steadily to
principles, or regulations once laid down. But if, on reviewing the
sins of our youth, we feel it often necessary to ask forgiveness
from dear departed parents, equally imperative shall we find it, as
we reflect on the failures of after-life, to make the same request to
our children; and thus, dear children, do I with love and sorrow ask
pardon of you.

But to return from this long digression. Mrs Snelling, the old pew
opener, will wonder what I am doing if I do not pass along the
aisle more briskly. We are come now to the "table pew;" William
Meeking has the bassoon to his lips, and some dozen of country
beaux, each with a leaf from the walnut trees in his button-hole,
with perhaps a  pink, a stock, or sprig of sweetbriar, are raising the
Psalm. In yonder square pew, entered only from the vestry, sits
Mrs Hickman, the wife of the minister, amongst whose family a
little boy, rather younger than myself, lived to become the highly
respected minister of a congregation at Denton in Suffolk; but
passing on to the furthest of four square seats under the line of
windows in front of the pulpit, I must introduce a family of
singular excellence, and high esteem in the neighbourhood. 

The staple trade of the town was wool, and Mr Watkinson was one
of the master woolcombers, wealthy for such a locality, for he was
reckoned to be worth ś30,000. He owned one of the best houses in
the town, built by himself with every accommodation for a family
of twelve children. * Beyond the extensive yards and warehouses
were a bowling-green and pleasure garden, with a shrubbery
enclosing a swimming bath, and a large kitchen garden with
orchard adjoining. With Anne and Jane Watkinson, the two
youngest daughters, it was the priviledge of Ann and Jane Taylor
to be intimate. The family were well ordered almost to a proverb,
and well educated too. Mr Watkinson had been a member of the
Society of Friends, and never relaxed, so far as my observation
went, in the formality and reserve formerly distinguishing that
community. His wife was a plain, sensible, domestic woman, of
perhaps the fewest words that in such a family could be done with.
Of the host of sons and daughters I can distinctly call to mind the
features of each, but I could have had but slight knowledge of their
characters. Of Anne, however, my own companion, though she left
England with her family for America at fourteen, I have heard Mr
Hickman say that he always felt something like respectful awe in
her presence! Such was the mental provision for my earliest
friendship. 

The Lungleys, shopkeepers of repute and means, as most of those
good folks were, occupied one of that set of pews. Mr Lungley was
a singularly simplehearted, and free spirited man; Mrs Lungley, a
clever, active, managing woman, as much at home with the young
as the young themselves. Their house was always open, the
rendezvous of as many as could anyhow reckon themselves friends
or cousins. 

Their one child, a daughter, spent the closing year of her education
under the care of my father and mother, after they left Lavenham,
and years later, when at the head of a large family of her own, she
told me that her first permanent religious impressions were made
by my dear father's conversations, and that important arrangements
in her family were founded on a recollection of his plans. One of
these, the assignment of a separate "study" for each of the children
when old enough to use it, the wealth of her husband enabled him
to carry out to the fullest extent in building a new residence. 

Mr Buck, a stiff, old-fashioned linen-draper, is waiting for notice
in the adjoining pew; what I chiefly remember about him is, that in
his best parlour there hung a large frame, containing what I never
saw anywhere else, varieties in "darning," all sorts of fabrics being
admirably imitated,  from plain muslin to various damask patterns,
the performances of Betsy Buck his daughter. I have sometimes
wished for a leaf out of her book. 

Mrs Sherrar and two maiden daughters occupied one of the upper
seats in the synagogue; and her son-in-law, Mr Hillier, the "squire's
pew," carefully screened at both ends from the vulgar gaze. These
ranked among the small gentry of the neighbourhood; the Sherrars
keeping what was no mean establishment for the little country
place, two maids and a man; the Hilliers living in a handsome
house with grounds at the lower end of the town. He was in the
main a worthy man, and though a regular attendant upon Mr
Hickman's ministry, might be called the squire, not only of the
humble Meeting-house, but of Lavenham itself. 

His wife was a clever, showy woman, reckless of such graces as
are deemed specially feminine, and able to utter speeches not so
easy to repeat as to remember. The infirmity of both, if my
recollections may be trusted, was pride Mr Hillier's a quiet
reserved pride, his wife's a bold and open pride; and a
circumstance occurred that sufficiently stirred the pride of both,
proved disastrous to the interests of the small community, and
though little suspected then, affected greatly our own future
destiny in life. 

This brings me to the pulpit, which has been almost forgotten in
the pews. Mr Hickman, the minister, was a plain sensible man, of
no aim, in manner or anything, but with a fund of natural humour
in conversation. He was, perhaps, as little likely to make the
venture that he did as any one we could think of; yet, having
become a  widower in process of time he thought of, and  singular
presumption addressed, prevailed with, and married Mrs Hillier's
sister, Fanny Sherrar! She was neither young nor handsome;
neither rich enough to render it a tempting speculation, nor, as was
supposed, specially qualified to become an intelligent companion.

The gentry of a small country town could then afford to do with
humble attainments in that line, and I am inclined to think the
tradespeople were as a rule better informed. Upon one occasion, at
a party in honour of a bride who had belonged to this higher grade,
the lady addressed my father across the room with, "Mr Taylor,
who wrote Shakespeare?" The husband, feigning an amused laugh,
could only say, "Just hear my wife!" It was a question none of the
humbler folk there needed to ask. With Fanny Sherrar, however,
Mr Hickman was somewhat captivated, and he proceeded to the
offensive extremity of making her his wife. Nothing could exceed
the righteous indignation of the Hilliers on this occasion. He,
worthy man, actually made a church question of it, on what
possible grounds it is difficult to conceive. There was for a long
time a scene of grievous contention, convocations of neighbouring
ministers were called in to arbitrate, and it ended in the Hilliers
leaving both the Meeting and the town. I should add that Mrs
Hickman's conduct as a wife, and especially as a step-mother, went
far to redeem the credit of her husband's discernment. 

The poor of the congregation sat in the galleries, the men
occupying the one, the women the other; the girls and boys of the
small Sunday School being similarly apportioned in one or the
other gallery. * This could not be long subsequent to the reputed
origin of Sunday Schools in the benevolent heart of Mr Raikes.
That at Lavenham was collected, I have reason to believe, greatly
through my father's personal exertions. He was active in
everything, regular, I may venture to affirm, and never weary in
well doing. 

A small volume, entitled "Twelve Addresses to a Sunday School,"
contains the substance of some spoken to this very early
congregated little band.   He did not take a class, but acted rather
as superintending visitor. And when, after an interval of more than
sixty years, I visited  Lavenham, I found, among surviving
members of this school, proofs that "the memory of the just is
blessed." Wherever he moved his name is still fragrant. 

Mr Hubbard, a basket-maker, a young man of very peculiar
character, part simple, part conceited, part worthy yes, a good part
worthy part thinking, and very theological, was engaged, as the
paid teacher of the boys, sitting with them in the gallery and
supplying the want of gratuitous teachers. Teachers of this sort
were indeed, at that time, as little known as schools. There was
scarcely one department of Christian usefulness, as it is now
understood, at that time, occupied or even thought of by our
churches as necessarily belonging to church work. 

I must not, in my present review, forget "Old Orford." But where
shall we find him? Not in a pew it may have been half a century
since he sat in one but high up on the pulpit stairs, for he is very
deaf, and does not, I fear, contrive to hear much even with his
conspicuous trumpet; but he tries. His aged features, surmounted
by a red night-cap, are among a set of pencil studies, still extant,
by my father. How old he really was, I cannot say, but so long as I
remember him, "Old Orford" was popularly reputed to be a
hundred years old, though, I suppose, he moved among the figures
at about the same rate as most of us. *

And, certainly, Peter Hitchcock, the clerk in the "table pew," ought
to have been named earlier as much a character as could be found
in the congregation. A stout, thickset little man, of, as one might
say, the "cock robin" build was he, with the peculiarities of the
bachelor, and betraying some of its least offensive propensities in
his queer physiognomy. 

As a retired flour dealer, he possessed a snug independency, and
had fitted up, for himself, a small house, for the garden of which
my father, early in repute as a landscape gardener, kindly drew a
variety of plans. Yet it was but a slip, and the economic Peter
saved the expense of a man, by clipping the grass-plots himself
with a pair of scissors. 

Two maiden sisters, Miss Sally and Miss Betsy, never otherwise
called, lived with him, each a perfect specimen of an "old maid."
Miss Betsy, the youngest, had, perhaps, the most fretful, unhappy
expression of countenance that could well be conceived. Verily,
she looked as if it had been half a century, at least, since the world
had smiled upon her, if, indeed, it had not been ill-using her for
quite that period. 

No doubt, she was unhappy, and benevolence, even Christian
benevolence, does not seem to extend to this description of
sufferer. Fathers and mothers, and young people of both sexes,
appear to have received dispensation for heartlessly adding to the
sorrows of that solitary condition. In parents, nothing can be more
indiscreet; in young women, less indelicate; in young men, nothing
more ungenerous. 

What can that father expect from his daughters, who allows
himself to taunt, with "cruel mocking," the unmarried women of
their society? What but the conviction that to marry is
indispensable, and therefore, at whatever risk? Yet is it always the
least excellent, the least valuable of a family who is left to fill the
withering ranks at which the young and the thoughtless the old and
the thoughtless, I may safely add, point the finger? If constrained
to guess at histories, I should be disposed to affirm that, more
frequently than otherwise, the useful retiring, affectionate
daughter, is left to expend her womanly love on the declining
years, and trying infirmities of her parents, while the colder heart
plays a successful game, and sports the honours of the wedding
ring. 

Perhaps there would be more of romantic history in the
biographies of the old maid of society than in those of twice the
number of flourishing wives, history that would excite, if known,
the tenderest sympathy, the truest respect. Many might be the
causes enumerated that have led virtuous women to refuse
marriage women among whom might be found some of that
almost extinct  class, whose New Testament includes that
awkward text "only in the Lord."

What, however, may have been Miss Betsy's history, I know
nothing, beyond the obvious discontent of her countenance; but of
Miss Sally, there were traditions of some interest, how far correct,
I cannot say. She was, I think, the senior by several years, and must
have been pretty in her time, while her now aged quiet face had
none of that expression which made her sister so conspicuous. But
she was admitted to be "not quite right, you know," for, as the
mood came over her, she would retire to the corner of the room (I
have seen her do so when it was filled with company), and stand
there, for a length of time, straight upright, with her face to the
wall, and occasionally whispering a little to herself. 

It was something of a trial to "Ann and Jane" to see Miss Sally
making so queer an exhibition of herself, but I do not remember
having our gravity upset by it; it was only Miss Sally in one of her
freaks, and we were too young to understand the mysterious hints
occasionally floating, "that, many years ago, she had a
disappointment, and had not been quite right ever since." I think,
also, that one of her arms was paralysed, and hung useless at her
side. Such were the hieroglyphics of one mournful, yet not
uncommon history. 

In a circle, such as I have now described, we children, of five and
six years old, were placed on our parents' removal from London. It
was a happy seclusion. Yet my mother had gone down to it with an
almost breaking heart, bringing, to this circle of strangers, a recent
grief in the loss of one lovely child, and before the year was out,
losing another; so that all the assiduities of my father, and the
novel charm of a summer in the country, failed to reconcile her to
the banishment, till the first dreary winter had passed away, and
then a heart, sensitive as was my dear mother's, could not remain
long untouched by natural scenes and pleasures.

But the winter was dreary. In the course of it, my father was called
(as, indeed, he frequently was) for a month, to London, in
prosecution of his profession as an engraver; and with her two
little girls, her young half-sister, and a single servant, with the
recollection of her lost children bleeding in her bosom, and in a
house large enough to have accommodated half-a-dozen such
families, my mother dragged wearily through the dismal evenings
of this, to her, forlorn exile. One of them is still fresh in my
memory, as I have heard her describe it. 

It was a dark and stormy winter's night, the wind roared down the
huge kitchen chimney, and screamed in the trees across the road.
"Ann and Jane" had gone early to bed, the last dear babe had
recently found its resting-place in the churchyard, and my poor
mother sat in her grief beside the parlour fire. Suddenly a dreadful
crash was heard; the kitchen chimney was exactly over the room in
which we slept, and her instant thought was that it had fallen,
buring us in its ruins. 

She ran to the foot of the wide staircase and called, I was always a
wakeful sleeper, but now there was no answer, and she felt no
doubt of the terrible meaning of the silence. Her sister jumped out
of the parlour window, and, my mother and servant following, fled
up the dark street to Mr Meeking's, the nearest friend in need. She
fell on the high steps leading up to his shop-door, and his little
dog, rushing out, tore off her cap before she could regain her feet.
"Oh! Mr Meeking, Mr Meeking, my children are both killed!"
"Let's hope not, madam, let's hope not," and the worthy old man,
with sons, staves, and lanterns, hastened back with her to the scene
of disaster, first, of course, visiting our bedroom, where, holding a
lantern at the foot of the bed, "Nancy and Jenny" were seen sound
asleep. 

That was enough; and when they had searched in vain through all
the upper rooms of the large house, they began to smile at the
alarm as one of imagination only, till entering the kitchen a mound
of bricks upon the floor, that had fallen down the ample chimney,
explained what had happened. The cracked grate long remained to
attest the peril. 

But my father returned returned with sufficient employment in his
art for months to come. Spring returned also, the winter had
passed, the rain was over and gone, the time of the singing of birds
was come, and my dear mother awoke to the beauties that
surrounded her. Not that the style of country was particularly
attractive. Suffolk, or at least that part of it, swells into shoulders
of heavy corn land, with little wood, and these undulations shut out
extensive prospects; a small river creeps dully through a
succession of quiet meadows, and I think it must be partly owing
to this tameness that a real taste for the country was not sensibly
awakened in me till ten or twelve years later in my history. 

I can hardly otherwise account for an impression of gloom which,
though it was seen under the sunlight of childhood, still hangs over
that Lavenham scenery. Enthusiasm must have been enthusiastic to
be kindled among those flat meadows and cold slopes, with their
drowsy river; but there might be other causes that make me feel
even now that to walk in broad daylight, but alone, by that river's
brink, or up the rugged "Clay Hill" beyond, would try my nerves. I
came to love the real country afterwards, have long loved it, and
have craved, perhaps, no earthly blessing more than a home and a
garden in the country, and happy am I to say now, at sixty-two, that
the delight derived from such pleasures is still healthily vivid
within me. * 

And, whatever the surrounding country might be, there was at
Lavenham a large and beautiful garden. We lived not in either of
the big front parlours, but in a small pleasant room opening into it.
There my father's high desk, at which, during his whole life, he
stood, as the most  healthy position, to engrave, occupied the
corner between the fire and a large window; my mother sat on the
opposite site, and we had our little table and chairs between them.
One wing of the premises seen from this window was covered with
a luxuriant tea tree, drooping in long branches, with its small
purple flowers; * on a bed just opposite was a great cinnamon rose
bush, covered with bloom; a small grass plot lay immediately
under the window, and beyond were labyrinths of flowering
shrubs, with such a bush of honeysuckle as I scarcely remember to
have seen anywhere. Then there were beds of raspberries,
gooseberries, and currants, espalier'd walks, ample kitchen garden,
walls and palings laden with fruit, grass and gravel walks, a
honeysuckle arbour, and an open seated summer-house;
flourishing standard fruit trees, and no end of flowers and rustic
garden seats all this world of vernal beauty, all to be enjoyed only
by stepping into it, won my mother's heart in this first springtide
out of London, and the country retained its hold on her affections
to the last. She never loved the town again, and entered fully and
for ever into the truth of those lines written long afterwards by her
little Jane, 

"Happy the mother who her train can rear

Far 'mid its breezy hills from year to year!"

Here our habits and, to some degree, our tastes were formed, and
here began our education. In that little back parlour we were
taught the formal rudiments, and in the garden and elsewhere,
constantly under the eye of our parents, we fell in with more than
is always included  the catalogue of school learning at so much per
quarter. Books were a staple commodity in the house. From my
mother's habit of reading aloud at breakfast and at tea, we were
always picking up something; to every conversation we were
auditors, and, I think, quiet ones, for, having no nursery, the
parlour would have been intolerable otherwise. 

There was a large room adjoining, having a glass door into it, and
there, or in the garden, we were at liberty to romp. A closet in this
room was allowed us as a baby-house, round the walls of which we
arranged our toys, but I must acknowledge that here we were not
the aborigines, an interminable race of black ants had taken
previous possession, and we could only share and share alike with
them. 

I do not know how far children so completely invent little histories
for ourselves as we did. We most frequently personated two poor
women making a hard shift to live; or we were "aunt and niece,"
Jane the latter and I the former; or we acted a fiction entitled "the
twin sisters," or another, the "two Miss Parks." And we had, too, a
great taste for royalty, and were not a little intimate with various
members of the royal family. Even the two poor women, "Moll
and Bet," were so exemplary in their management and industry as
to attract the notice of their Royal Highnesses the Princesses
("when George the Third was King.") When these two estimable
cottagers were the subject of our personation, we occupied
(weather permitting) either the summer-house or the ci-devant
pig-sty. On the grassy ascent upon which the summer-house stood,
terminating the long walk, the grass was mixed with a small plant,
I fancy trefoil, but I have never been botanist enough to know;
however, its name to us was Bob, why, I cannot imagine, unless
from the supposed similarity of the three letters to its three small
leaves. This we used to gather for winter food, (so hard bestead
were we) and the seeds of the mallow we called cheeses, and laid
them up in store also. These were simple, healthy, inexpensive
toys and pleasures, and, having such resources always at hand at
home, and without excitements from abroad, we were never
burdensome with the teazing enquiry, "What shall we play at?
What shall we do?" Yet we had always assistance at hand if
needed. Both father and mother were accessible, and many a
choice entertainment did we owe to their patient contrivances. My
father, especially, was never weary of inventing, for our
amusement or instruction. I have still a little glass case containing
a cottage cut in cork, a few trees of moss, a piece of looking-glass
for a pond, a cork haystack, and so forth (a Suffolk idyll) which
was one of these productions. Another was a small grotto fitted up
with spars and minerals. But there was one of these home-made
toys which I can hardly think of now without pleasure; it was a
landscape painted on cardboard, cut out and placed at different
distances, through the lanes of which, by means of a wire turning
underneath, there slowly wound a loaded waggon and other
carriages; it was contained in a box about seven inches by twelve,
and two in depth, with a glass in front. What became of this
masterpiece of mechanism I do not know, but it greatly delighted
me, and I sometimes think that I owe to it the pleasure I have felt
up to this day at the sight of a tilted waggon winding along a
country road. * 

Of course my dear mother, with health never strong, and all the
needlework of the household on her hands, could not undertake
our entire instruction. Reading, the Needle, and the Catechism, we
were taught by her, and as my father was constantly engraving at
the high desk in the same room, it was easy for him to superintend
the rest. We were never severely treated, though both my parents
were systematic disciplinarians. But I record one instance of
mistaken punishment only to show how possible it is, when a child
is confused or alarmed, for parents to fall into that error. It must
have been when I was very young, for it was owing to a supposed
obstinacy in not spelling the word thy. I had been told it
repeatedly, t-h-y, in the same lesson, still at the moment it every
time unaccountably slipped from the memory. My mother could
only attribute it to wilful perverseness, though I believe that was a
disposition I could not be charged with. She felt, however, so fully
persuaded that I knew, and would not say, that she proceeded to
corporal punishment, very rarely administered, but not so entirely
abandoned as is the fashion now; a fashion, as I conceive, not
countenanced either by reason or scripture, so long as the child is
so young as to be sensible to little beyond bodily pleasure and
pain. "He that spareth the rod hateth his child," but the proper
season must be borne in mind. Wholly to withhold it in early
childhood, and to  continue it when higher feelings might be
appealed to, are errors perhaps equally mischievous. Happy are
they (and happy theirs) who with a nice discernment pause at the
moment when affections and principles may be brought to bear. 

The precise hours allotted to our instruction I now forget, but they
were regular, and regularly kept. I remember pleading once in vain
for some temporary deviation. We breakfasted at eight, dined at
half-past one, took tea at five; then at eight we went to bed, and
my father and mother supped at nine. On Sundays, however, we
were indulged to sit up to supper, a treat indeed. 

Of our Sunday habits I am thankful to remember that, though
never gloomy, they were after the olden fashion strict. It was a day
unlike to other days a feeling I should wish to preserve as a
perpetual safeguard. I will not say how much I was profited by
accompanying my father at seven o'clock on a winter's morning, to
the early prayer meeting, as I conclude, to be out of the way during
early duties at home. The only vivid recollection now in my
memory is of the astonishing noise made by the blower in raising
the vestry fire. This, with the assiduities of Mrs Snelling, the
pew-opener, have survived the friction of much more than
half-a-century. As Lavenham lies embedded in clay, and there was
neither paving nor lighting, Water Street, which frequently well
deserved its name, offered sometimes difficulties to Sunday
chapel-goers, and not a few of the gentlemen wore pattens. A
massive pair, belonging to our friend, Mr Watkinson, the tall,
sedate, immoveable man, never guilty, if he knew it, of saying or
doing a droll thing, was, when with his family he removed to
America, given by him to my father. 

Occasionally, when my mother was not well enough to go from
home on the Sunday, I have been left to stay with her, and one of
our quiet Sundays was signalized by an incident that shook my
nerves. She had fallen asleep in the little back parlour, leaving me
sole guardian of the premises. Suddenly I heard a tremendous
noise somewhere in the kitchen, a knocking and a battering so long
and loud, that nothing less than determined burglars could account
for. My mother was so poorly that I dared not wake her, and even
then so deaf that she did not hear the noise. With inexpressible
terror I listened and watched to see the ruffians either enter the
room or emerge from the back door into the garden, and, only
eight or nine years old as I might be, armed myself with the poker
for the worst. If I had not happened to catch sight of the culprit at
the precise moment of escape, the mystery might have remained to
this day unaccounted for. But I did; an immense dog issued
suddenly with prodigious speed from the back door with the
remains of a large, deep, stone milk-jar about his neck! Doubtless
a small quantity of milk had been left at the bottom, the poor
fellow had unwittingly thrust in his nose, the neck was narrow, the
milk beyond his tongue-tip, he thrust, and thrust, till he found
himself in dreadful custody. Then began the sound that chilled my
blood as he banged his portable prison about the kitchen floor, till
the bottom giving way, he made use of recovered daylight, though
still with a good portion of the pot about his neck, and decamped
through the garden, wearing, to  my astonished eyes, something
like a close cottage bonnet. Whither his terror carried him I never
heard, though if he scampered through the town in such a guise I
think it would have made some stir. * 

And another Sunday afternoon had its terror. From my earliest
childhood I had a nervous apprehension of the sudden death of
those about me, so that any inequality in the breathing, if asleep, or
anything unusual in appearance, excited my alarm. This time, my
father being slightly unwell, I was left at home alone with him. For
our mutual edification he read aloud Wilcox's Sermons, not the
liveliest volume in the world, and after a time I perceived
something very singular in his pronunciation and tone, a confusion
of syllables, a lengthening and a pause! I thought he was going to
die! He did not die, but soon safely recovered; yet it was years
afterwards that, recalling the symptoms of this appalling seizure,
the true character of it occurred to me, my good father had been
almost asleep!

I had always a conscience, whether or not enlightened, yet always
a conscience, and especially with regard to the Sabbath. One
Sunday I was myself alone at home, from some trifling ailment,
and employed the morning in reading a little book by the Rev.
George Burder, containing the "History of Master Goodchild," and
various other strictly Sunday readings. Towards the end is the fable
of the kite and the string, but this stopped me a fable might not
belong to Sunday reading? and I left the book open at the place, till
my father returned from Meeting, to know whether I might
proceed. He silenced my apprehensions, while approving the
hesitation. I should prefer so to educate a child as that his errors
should always lean to the safer side. If misconceptions cannot
always be avoided, those which shall early imbue his feelings with
a reverence for the Sabbath are at least less perilous in their
tendencies than an over liberal view in the opposite direction. I
have, as before stated, no gloomy associations with the Sundays of
my childhood, but habits were then formed such as afford a safe
ground-work on which principle may build with advantage. 

The time at which I began to string my thoughts (if thoughts) into
measure I cannot correctly ascertain. It could not be after I was ten
years old, and I think when only seven or eight, and arising from a
feeling of anxiety respecting my mother's safety during illness. Not
wishing (I conclude) to betray myself by asking for paper at home,
I purchased a sheet of foolscape from my friend, Mr Meeking, and
filled it with verses in metre imitated from Dr Watts, at that time
the only poet on my shelves. What became of this effusion I do not
know, but I should be glad to exchange for it, if I could, any of my
later ones, 

"Not for its worth, we all agree,
But merely for its oddity,"

as Swift says of learning in ladies. 

The earliest stanza that dwells in my memory, whether belonging
to this production or not I cannot tell, is the following

"Dark and dismal was the weather,
  Winter into horror grew;
Rain and snow came down together,
  Everything was lost to view."

Certain it is, anyway, that from about this date it became my
perpetual amusement to scribble, and some large literary projects
occupied my reveries. A poetic rendering of the fine moral history
of Master Headstrong; a poem intended as antecedent to the Illiad;
a new version of the Psalms; and an argumentative reply to
Winchester on Future Punishment, were among these early
projects, and more or less executed.

Though from the result in substantial pecuniary benefit to
ourselves (as much needed as unexpected), together with, I venture
to hope, some good to others, I have great reason to be thankful for
the habit thus contracted, yet I have certainly suffered by allowing
the small disposable time of my youth to expend itself in writing
rather than in reading. My mind was in this way stinted by scanty
food. Of that I am fully sensible, and leave it as a warning to
whomsoever it may concern. If I had not breathed a tolerably
healthy atmosphere it would have been lean indeed. But there was
always something to be imbibed; either from my mother's reading
at meals, or that in which we afterwards all took turn in the
workroom; from my father's untiring aptness to teach, his regular
habit of settling all questions by reference to authorities, and the
books that were always passing through the family. Wherever my
father moved there soon arose a book society, if there had not been
one before. One word, however, about the reading aloud at meals.
I believe my mother fostered thereby a habit of despatching hers
too quickly, by which her digestion was permanently injured; and,
again, it hindered our acquiring readiness in conversation. To
listen, not to talk, became so much a habit with us, as rather to
impair fluency of expression at least in speech. 

NOTES

* Another expedient dwells in family tradition which probably
succeeded the above, to the horrid clatter of which there may have
been domestic objections. He placed his watch under the weight of
the alarum in such a position as to require energetic action, on the
part of the awakened sleeper, to save it from utter destruction as
the weight descended. The habit once formed, these extreme
measures were discarded.  [ED.]

* A hymn sung aloud accompanied this private morning worship,
and the editor remembers when the voice was cracked with age,
hearing the cheerful though quaking notes cheerful, whether heard
through the open window of the study in summer time, or in the
darkness and chill of winter mornings. 

* The plates for Rees' Cyclop‘dia were executed under his
superintendence at his father's establishment, and he always
considered that these, and his frequent interviews with Dr Rees
during the progress of them, were a great means of awakening his
desire for knowledge in all its branches. [ED.]

* Investments were not so easily met with then as in these days. Mr
Smirke, R.A., was commissioned to paint four small circular
subjects, representing morning, noon, evening, and night, for the
ś100, which the young Isaac Taylor then engraved and published.
There was a considerable foreign sale for English prints at that
time, and the editor has seen prints signed "Isaac Taylor, Junr.," in
some of the remotest spots on the Continent. 

* It was here that she picked up several anecdotes of George the
Second's residence in the palace, which, with more stirring stories
of the Gordon riots, she sometimes repeated to her grandchildren
on winter evenings. Among the former she related how the old
king once spent an hour on his knees searching for a sixpence that
had rolled on the floor, handing it when found to an attendant with
stately gravity, and the remark, "I do not want the sixpence, but I
did not wish it to be lost." How, walking one day with the Duchess
of Yarmouth, and observing some people laughing at a window
overlooking the gardens, he had a high wall built immediately,
which shut out their view for ever after. And how George III.
kissed his bride on her arrival at Buckingham House, the Duke of
York waving his hat to the crowd outside the gardens and shouting
"he's got her, he's got her." The Gordon riots had made a deep
impression on her memory. Her mother's house was near Meux's
brewery, having fields then close behind it. Preparations had been
made at the brewery to play hot water upon the rioters, and the
mob were advancing to the attack when the trumpets of the
dragoons and the discharge of firearms created an awful pause.
Sometime afterwards she saw swinging the corpse of a neighbour's
son on a gallows at the end of the street. He was condemned and
executed for participation in the disturbances, of which it was
believed he had been only an accidental spectator. [ED.]

* Belonging to an older school was William Gurnal, Rector of
Lavenham, author of "The Christian in Complete Armour." [ED.]

* It is curious to note how frequently in many a provincial town
the proprietor of just such an omnium gatherum shop afterwards
developed into the substantial banker of the district, and how
generally, too, such, as in the present case, were nonconformists.
[ED.]

* It is related in her memoirs that she used to be placed on the
kneading-board in the shop, in order to recite, preach, or narrate, to
the great entertainment of the many visitors. [ED.]

* At that time wool was combed by hand, given out about the
country to be spun, sent to Holland to be woven, and brought back
to England to be sold. A direct ancestor of Mr Watkinson fought
under Cromwell. [ED.]

* In some old fashioned rural congregations of Nonconformists
this separation extends to the whole congregation. The custom is
common among the Protestant congregations on the Continent,
and universal among the Friends. 

In a paper entitled "Sixty Years Ago," contributed to the Sunday
School Magazine in 1848, by Mrs Gilbert, she says, "I am old
enough to remember that in a little country town, about 200 miles I
should think from Gloucester, there was a Sunday School very
nearly sixty years ago, and one in which my dear father used to
labour with all the activity of a warm Christian heart. I was a very
little girl, and perhaps for that reason I do not forget the grand gala
days, in which long tables were set in Mr Watkinson's barn, and
well covered with roast beef and plum puddings, for which the
young people of his family (there were twelve in all, sons and
daughters) had been merrily busy in stoning raisins. Yes, I
remember them! And there came the schools, winding up the quiet
street, for it was very quiet generally, though then of course, the
neighbours would stand at their cottage doors to gaze at the
procession, and the young gentlemen at Mr Blower's school would
look over the blinds to wonder about it; and people, perhaps, who
had not yet sent their children might wish they had. There have
been many Sunday School treats and dinners given since that time,
but I just mention this, to prove that at the remote little town of
Lavenham, in Suffolk, there was at least as early as the year 1790,
a happy, well regulated Sunday School; so that if Gloucester
should ever think of erecting a monument to the founder, it might
do well to inquire whether or not the first thought were really
there?"

* A similar aged worthy occupied a seat, at the top of the pulpit
stairs, at Ongar, during my grandfather's pastorate there. Leaning
against the pulpit door, he looked like the minister's henchman.
His venerable and rheumy countenance, his drab knee breeches
gaping above his corded grey stockings, are deeply graven on my
memory, and not less so, a certain occasion, when his huge tin
snuff-box slipped from his pottering fingers, and rolled bump,
bump, down the uncarpeted stairs with portentous noise. John Day, 
no whit disconcerted, watched its course, and then, with his heavy
highlows, descended after it, one stair at a time, returning in like
manner. The whole operation took nearly a quarter of an hour; yet
the sermon halted not, nor did devout attention fail. In those days,
if any one suffered from drowsiness under the subdivided
discourse, he would rise and stand in his place. Several grave
elders, in an afternoon, might be seen thus upon their legs, and it is
recorded that my mother's great grandfather, Martin, leaning,
unluckily, upon his pew door in Kensington Church, it opened
suddenly, compelling him to follow its semi-circular movement at
a smart trot, till brought up sharp against the pew side. Then the
grave figure in snuff-coloured suit and proturbant wig, took it in
hand and walked back into his place, with probably no visible
disturbance of the congregation.  [ED.]

* She would have expressed the same fresh delight at eighty-five.
[ED.]

* Lycium Barbarum, Willow-Leaved Box Thorn.

* It will be observed that the intention of all these toys was the
healthy excitement of the imagination, and to stimulate a taste for
rural objects and the picturesque in nature. [ED.]

* Jefferys Taylor afterwards versified this incident for his "’sop
in Rhyme," ending with 

"At last he broke the bottom out
  Of this disastrous jug,
But still the dog was not without
  The remnant of the mug.
With this the trophy of the day 
  In haste forth trotted he,
And if 'twas ever knocked away
  They have not told it me."

CHAPTER II. LAVENHAM.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II.
Rural Holidays Castle Building First Visit to London Artistic Work
at Home Her Father's Dangerous Illness The New House Youthful
Gaities and Nervous Fears Political Disturbances State of Religion
Her Father enters the Nonconformist Ministry Removal from
Lavenham. 

CHAPTER II. LAVENHAM. 1789-1795.

"The simple ways in which my childhood walked."
     .     .     .     .     .     . 
"Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up,
 Fostered alike by beauty and by fear. 
WORDSWORTH. 

QUIET, and destitute of amusement as Lavenham was, we yet had
our holiday seasons and pleasures, all in keeping with life in the
country. In very fine weather, the tea, or even dinner, in the
garden, for which there was a choice of spots whether in sunshine
or in shade, was an occasion to the children. But the great thing
was a whole day's ramble, on what would now be called a pic-nic
excursion father, mother, children, and servants my father with his
pencil, my mother with a book, the servant with provisions. And
wherever there was a cottage, a stump, or a tree, worth sketching,
there we gathered round him (those of us who did not prefer to
hunt for violets), and my mother read till the sketch was finished.
Well I remember my father's signal, for attracting our notice to any
slip of the "picturesque" that might catch his eye. "Lookye, lookye
there?" It was certainly not his fault if my love for it was not
kindled so early as might have been. Several drawings and small
cards are still in my possession, the result of these happy
excursions. 

But of all our rural holidays the most exciting was an annual visit
to Melford fair. Melford was, perhaps is, a very pretty town of a
single street, terminating at the upper end in a large, open, and
extremely pleasant green, with respectable houses on one side, a
fine old church at the top, and fringed on the other by the park of
Sir Harry Parker. On this green was spread the fair, not, as my
recollection serves, rude and riotous, but attracting an assemblage
of respectable country people from several miles round. Yet the
fair made but a part of the pleasure, for on the return walk of about
four miles was there not tea at Mr and Mrs Blackadder's, a worthy
couple, the perfect personification of farmer and wife far up in
Suffolk, say a hundred years ago, for they were still quite of the
olden times. Their little homestead was the very centre of
old-fashioned hospitality, and tea from the best china in the best
parlour was no small delight. Best parlour, however, I should not
call it, for the "House, or houseplace" as it is called in
Lincolnshire, on the other side of the entrance, could not aspire to
anything like so genteel a name. There the 'min' were admitted to
regal themselves, master and men together after their daily labour,
unless there was "company." But of the parlour the great attraction
for us little girls was the mysterious weather-house on the
mantlepiece, from which, if fine weather was to be expected there
turned out "a full-dress" lady, or when storms, a gentleman. Home
again, it was a pleasant three miles summer evening walk, perhaps
with moonlight, all of the olden time! Once, Jane was retained for
a few days, a  great treat for her, in the midst of farm occupations;
but it was with a dash of terror in the enjoyment, that she used to
accompany Johnny Underwood to collect the cows for milking.
Sometimes, but this was later, when my father's circumstances
were becoming easy, there was tea at the "Bull" at Melford, and a
drive home in a post-chaise, with its bob-up-and-down postilion,
the invariable vehicle for a party in those days. For the clay-roads,
however, and among the foot-deep ruts of Suffolk, a lighter vehicle
was in use called a "whiskey" or a "quarter-cart." This was
constructed to run beside the ruts, and the horse did not occupy the
middle of either the carriage or the road, but ran in shafts on one
side, so as just to escape the heavy dragging fissure made by the
waggon-wheels. Now, so long as the animal kept the track, and
especially so long as the side on which he ran did not suddenly
sink, all was safe, the weight of the horse counterbalancing the
sway, but if suddenly raised on the opposite side, horse and chaise
would go over together. To drive a "quarter-cart," therefore, along
a Suffolk road required some skill, yet, my father, who had a
regular engagement to supply the drawings and engravings of the
gentlemen's seats of the county, for Gedge's Pocket-Book,
published at Bury, drove continually in a "quarter-cart" and never
met with an accident. 

On the 9th or 10th of October (perhaps both), Lavenham Fair was
held in the "market place," though it boasted no market. And on
the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes came out in all his glory. That
night (if one may speak for another) the excitement was intense.
Exactly opposite our house was the playground of Mr Blower's
school, and it was a matter of moment to ascertain whether the
young gentlemen intended to make their annual display of
fireworks on the premises or in the market place. If the former, we
had an excellent view from our upper windows, alloyed by only
two circumstances; the one, that the principal front of all the
fireworks was directed towards a bevy of ladies assembled, for the
evening, in the gardens of the bachelor clergyman; we little
people, therefore, could only rejoice in the happy freedom of
squibs, sky-rockets, and Roman candles, which confessed neither
law, limit, nor politeness in their eccentricities. The other
detraction from the pleasures of the evening, consisted in the dark
uninhabited remoteness of the large chamber, from which we
witnessed the exhibition; a flight of dark stairs led up to it; a few
pieces of ambiguous lumber were its only furniture, and even by
daylight, I did not pass the foot of that flight without a response
from my nerves. But at night! It was only the fireworks in front,
and papa and mamma behind, that rendered it tenantable. 

If, however, Mr Blower's young gentlemen "let off" in the market
place, the interest and anxiety were greater still. We had then to be
conveyed through innumerable perils by our dear, careful father, to
"Bob Watson's," a fat, good-natured hairdresser, from whose large
upper window the view was excellent except, that again, as fate
would have it, the most brilliant Catherine wheels and every
determinable article were always set, would you believe it?
opposite the house of Mr Brook Branwhite, who possessed a
numerous family of unmarried daughters! Nay, the two young
doctors, brothers, usually known as  Dr Tom and Dr John,
displayed exactly the same perversenesss, calculating all their
effects for the same bay-windows! very provoking, but historians
must be faithful.

These brothers, Dr Tom and Dr John, carried on the various
departments of the medical profession for miles round Lavenham,
and lived together in the same house, but, according to popular
report, without ever speaking to each other! The patients, however,
were never interchangeable. We belonged to Dr Tom, the
youngest, a handsome man, who, as surgeon in the militia,
sometimes quickened the pulses of little patients by appearing in
the uniform of his regiment. For myself, he won my heart by the
gift, one day, of a most diminutive pill box, a real original
Dutch-made wooden pill box not one of the paper substitutes to
which we were condemned when the trade with Holland was
broken up by the French war, and with which the country has
remained apparently satisfied ever since cured or killed, as before! 

I have hesitated whether to give the local colloquial appellation of
"Bob Watson" and others, but I am amused (as, perhaps, you may
be) at the extent to which this homeliness of style was then and
there carried. Whether from the seclusion of the place or the
distance of the period, most of our poorer neighbours were always
so spoken of: taking the cottages, as they stood nearest to us, there
was Poll Porter, and Bet Carter, and Bob Nunn, Billy Joslin, and
Sam Snell. Wishing, as far as I can, to photograph both place and
period, this homeliness cannot be excluded. Be it remembered that
it was as far back as 1786 that the sun first shone on Lavenham for
me. Such as it was then, I give it you, and pleasant it was on a
summer's afternoon to see the street lined with spinning wheels
(not spinning-jennies, but Jennies spinning); everywhere without,
the whiz of the wheels, and within, the scrape of the shuttle, the
clatter and thump of the loom at which the men were at work.
Picturesqueness was got out of it all, if not gold. * 

Upon "Bob Nunn," a journeyman carpenter, I remember to have
expended much compassion and worlds of contrivance, by which
he was never benefited. Very early, I took to castle building, and
the desolate condition of this poor man laid the first stone, as far as
I can remember, of these aerial edifices. He was one of the ugliest,
dirtiest, and most forlorn looking persons I can call to mind; but
withal, reputed industrious and honest, so that his misery must
have sprung from an indolent, ragged, offensive, dawdle of a wife.
His mud cottage, with its mud floor, and wretched destitution,
were the pity of the neighbourhood. It was, therefore, a favourite
speculation of mine to take him in hand, and, in some way, ridding
him of his female incumbrance, I conferred upon him the
advantages which industry and honesty ought to secure; in fact, I
made a new man of him. This was one of my castles, and for years,
I can assure you, they were of the most benevolent and even
patriotic character. I had another prot‚g‚. Billy Joslin was, by
trade, a hand weaver, with a wife, a clever char-woman, perhaps of
doubtful integrity, but occasionally employed in our service. He
was a member of our church, had a large family, and was worthy
enough, and poor enough, to become a recipient of my bounties.
For this family, I did wonders. There was a house on the common,
shaded by two fine trees, which, repaired and white-washed, would
be very pretty; this, therefore, I mentally repaired and
white-washed accordingly, and next, provided the family with
suitable clothing, determining the number and patterns of every
article, being greatly indebted for the colours of the little frocks
required, to the diligent study of the patchwork quilt under which I
slept or should have slept, when these perplexing cares sometimes
engaged me. Having thus made full preparation, I enjoyed the
satisfaction of breaking to them the singular secret; when, having
them all clean and dressed, I took them in procession, two and
two, to their new habitation, where, I have no doubt, that I
supplied any deficiency in their means of subsistence.

I believe that all this good was done before I was twelve years old
perhaps I should rather say all this evil! For what a ruinous
pre-occupation of mind does it imply? The habit itself, whatever
be its object, is so grievously injurious, that I would leave it,
stamped with double earnestness, as a charge to my children and to
theirs, never to indulge in it; the best way being never to begin.
How must they be characterised, who, passing like shadows only,
among the realities of living duty, inhabit hourly, daily, and for
years, a world of imagined interests, wasting mental vigour upon
exertions never made, and dimming common comforts by an
ever-hovering mist of vain imaginings!

When, during my youth, something like religious impression was
made upon my mind, I felt the disadvantage, was convinced of the
sin, and made severe struggles to disentangle myself from the
snare in which for so many years I had been a prisoner. And for a
time, I think a considerable time, I sustained the resolve; but at
length a small circumstance, nothing more than having to copy a
beautiful landscape, carried me over again into fairy land, and led
my musings into the seductive regions from which, as I thought, I
had escaped. It had its day a day too long but eventually the
realities of life made forcible entrance; though duty itself has
sometimes had to pioneer its way over the rough roots and broken
stems of an imperfectly cleared wilderness. Oh, my foolish heart,
what hast thou to say to such a retrospect! * 

We had been in the country about three years, when  my mother's
yearnings to see her family and friends in London were brought to
a point by the expected visit of the king (George III.) to St Paul's,
to return thanks for his recovery from mental illness; a scene of
excitement little calculated to continue a sane condition, but there
was probably some unacknowledged political reason for amusing
the public by the fearful venture. Among the thousands who on
that occasion flocked to the metropolis were my mother and her
two little girls. I was then, June 1789, somewhat more than seven,
and Jane not quite six years old. We were to travel by the Bury
coach, which passed through Sudbury, seven miles distant, as early
as seven in the morning on its road to London. Between one and
two, therefore, that summer morning we left our beds in order to
start by "Billy East," by which must be understood the postman's
cart. Loaded, and covered in as we were, behind our single
Rosinante, I soon began to feel very sick; and being asked how I
was, replied, "I am inclined for what I have no inclination to." That
I should have borne this early sprout of the pun in mind for much
more than half a century, seems something like a waste of
memory, does it not? Yet, if in my wisdom I were to try and forget
it now, I daresay I should not be able. My father accompanied us to
Sudbury, then returning to his high desk, and the sole
companionship of his promising little boy, Isaac, third of his name,
my still living and well-known brother. He was at his birth (1787)
a remarkably fine child, as is fully attested by a sketch taken of
him when less than twenty-four hours old, by my father; but he
began immediately to pine, his death at one time was hourly
expected, and a glass held over his mouth alone detected his
breathing. In this state Mrs Perry Branwhite insisted upon taking
him to a wet-nurse, a young woman of nineteen, and the change
for life was almost instantaneous. He was thenceforward carried
daily to "Nanny Keble," of whom there is a small portrait, painted
as a gleaner, at Stanford Rivers. * For size and beauty as a child he
became after this almost proverbial. Martin, born fourteen months
afterwards, was also placed out with her, and Isaac, therefore, was
the only one left at home when we set out for London. 

Of London, and its brilliant doings, I can recal but here and there a
shred. We had friends in Fleet Street, on the left hand side, looking
up to St Paul's, and there we were to take our stations. A better
position could scarcely have been selected from which to witness
the cavalcade. We went to the house at five in the morning of the
25th of June, the room, a first floor, being fitted up with seats
rising from the windows a considerable height behind, but we as
little folks were happily placed in front. There we waited, oh, so
long! There was amusement, however, in watching the throngs
below less fortunate than ourselves, and the ladies in the room,
many in full dress with their hair curled and powdered, and
head-dresses adorned with white ribbons carrying in gold letters
the words, "God save the king." At length, towards noon, the
splendid pageant arrived, and fortunately for us a carriage with
several of the princesses was detained a considerable time under
our windows. They were dressed in white, and some sort of golden
ornament lay in the lap of one of them. Poor things! I have thought
since, for the lot of English princesses has not always been
enviable. So the cavalcade passes into the mists of memory, which
refuses to produce more of that long forgotten day.

The evening of the following day London was splendidly
illuminated. We children saw a little of it in Holborn, but my poor
mother was induced reluctantly to accompany a party to the India
House, which was reported particularly brilliant, and from that
night dated much of her after life of suffering Whether from fear
of fire, or some local accident, the plugs in that neighbourhood
were up and the streets under water, while, to make matters worse,
in the midst of the overwhelming crowd both my mother's shoes
were trodden off. Many others it seems were equally unfortunate,
for in the course of the night, she met a woman with a barrowful of
lost shoes, amongst which she had the strange luck to pick out first
one, and then the other of her own! The cold thus taken, however,
became so threatening that my father was summoned to town, and
though she recovered the immediate effects, her health was never
sound afterwards. 

Among the few additional circumstances which I retain of this
excursion is a visit to Kensington, to see that James Martin (my
mother's uncle), of whose conduct to his aged father you have
heard me speak. * Yes, and my terror at passing a door in my uncle
Charles Taylor's house, leading to a room, as I was told, full of
"dead men's arms and legs," a terror which scarcely yielded to the
information, afterwards obtained, that it was only a depositary for
plaster casts. The "dead men's legs" continued to speed after me,
notwithstanding. 

My mother having sufficiently recovered, we again left London for
our pleasant country home, to her with feelings how different from
those under which she first entered it! It was now a home, and with
the prospect of more than comfort. The work, to complete which
in cheap retirement my father had quitted London, was a set of
plates to an edition of Shakespeare, published by his brother
Charles. These had been so well executed as to establish his
reputation as an artist. Alderman Boydell about this time projected
what was to be a great national work, calculated to give
employment for many years to the first talent in the country, both
in painting and engraving. All the artists of note were engaged to
furnish pictures in oil, most of them illustrative of Shakespeare,
and all the engravers followed in their wake. Upon my father
showing to Mr Boydell some specimen plates of his small
Shakespeare, he was immediately entrusted with a large plate
(measuring about 24 inches by 18), the subject being the death of
David Rizzio by Opie. For this engraving, an immense advance
upon anything he had done before, my father was to receive 250
guineas. I have heard it said that the painter having some cause of
pique against Dr Walcot, the notorious Peter Pindar of the day,
introduced his portrait as the principal assassin. It is possible that
Peter in some of his satires may have justly incurred the rebuke.

I have heard my dear father say with what a pang of depression
and anxiety he contemplated so large an undertaking, which must
be carried through with his own solitary hand, and upon which so
much of the well-being of his family was suspended. But his was
not the heart to cower before difficulties. Hope, faith, activity,
patience, cheerfulness what a train of angel helpers! were at his
side, and to it he went. The work was admirably executed, though
not without difficulties. It was necessary to send the plate
frequently to London for proofs, and at every such time the painter
revised it, suggesting alterations of effect by black and white
chalk. Who but an engraver knows the doleful meaning of a
"touched proof?" An alteration freely made while the painter could
count ten, might cost the engraver more, probably, than as many
days, or even weeks to that effect. However, the plate was entirely
successful, and being exhibited at the Society of Arts in the
Adelphi, obtained the gold medal, and a premium of ten guineas,
as the best engraving of the year. * 

My father was now loaded with commissions, and the large
parlour which, unoccupied, had been our play-room, became the
centre of attraction to the neighbourhood. "The Pictures at Mr
Taylor's" became the lions of Lavenham. One of them, a noble
picture by Stothard the first interview between Henry the VIII. and
Ann Boleyn contained sixteen figures, rather larger than life, so
that it filled the side of the room. A beautiful one by Hamilton,
about eight feet by six, represented the separation of Edwy and
Elgiva. That of Jacques and the wounded deer was of the same
size, with many others. For engraving the Ann Boleyn the price
was 500 guineas. It was now necessary to take apprentices, and
two were engaged, one of whom, Nathan Branwhite, the eldest son
of the schoolmaster, afterwards became an artist of repute. Both
lived in the town, and did not, therefore, intrude on the comfort of
the fireside, to which my father and mother would not willingly
have submitted. Another room, however, was fitted up as a
workroom, to which my father's high desk was removed; and, as
various smaller works were in hand at the time, a printing press
was procured for "proving," and a young woman, glad to earn a
few shillings apart from the spinning wheel, was instructed to
work it; the building intended for a brewhouse being converted
into a printing office for the purpose. 

A course of easy prosperity appeared likely now to reward my
father's industry; but an immediate difficulty arose from the fact
that our pleasant house was required by its owner, the Rev.
William Cooke, and enquiry in every direction for another was
made without success. After much anxiety it was found necessary
to purchase one close by, having ground sufficient for a garden,
and with three cottages adjoining. It was in ruinous condition. For
the entire property the purchase-money was ś250, and it was to
cost ś250 more to render it habitable. 

This work, now commenced, therefore, and with all the  pleasure
that a thorough contriver, architect, and gardener, such as my
father by nature was, could not but feel in the seducing business of
brick and mortar, paint and paper, grass and gravel. Time, thought,
ingenuity, and hope were occupied to his heart's content. Here, in a
home of his own, contrived in every particular on his own ideas of
convenience and comfort, and with a large garden laid out to his
own taste, he hoped to rear his family , and spend his life. But a
cloud the size of a man's hand was in the sky. 

On the 30th of October in this year, 1792, your Uncle Jefferys was
born. Nanny Keble was then out of date, and the infant was
consigned to the care of nurse Hunt, a very clean cottager living up
an entry in the High Street, but open to the country behind. He was
about six weeks old, when my father started on one of his annual
journeys for the Pocket-Book. As usual it was in a "quarter-cart,"
and this time as far as Thetford in Norfolk. The season was
advanced, it came on continued rain, and having no shelter, he
returned with a severe cold, and rheumatic-fever ensued. It was the
commencement of a time of trial, not perhaps exceeded by any of
the subsequent afflictions of my mother's life. For three months he
was confined helpless, and almost hopeless, to his bed. Very soon
it was requisite to stop the workmen at the other house, which,
close in view of the room in which my father lay, was a sight of
agony to my poor mother; it stood dismantled and desolate, and
with every probability that it would never be inhabited by him. 

On my father's personal exertions depended our entire provision.
Nothing had as yet been realised beyond what was required for the
purchase of the house. Two apprentices, not sufficiently advanced
to do anything but of the humblest order, were left unemployed.
The four children at home, the eldest not eleven, the youngest only
four years old, were left to the tender mercies of a kitchen, full of
the helps and sitters-up that disorganise a house on such occasions;
while my mother, weak from her recent confinement, stricken in
her tenderest affections, giving up in one desperate abandonment
every care of which her husband was not the object, confined
herself night and day with little sleep or food to his bedside. What
it cost her to give up her children none can estimate who did not
know the depth of tenderness with which, till then, she had
devoted herself to our interests. It was sorrow indeed! 

I have wondered since that I was not admitted to render more
assistance than I recollect was the case, but I suspect the typhoid
form, which I believe the disease assumed, prevented this. I
remember well the forlorn foreboding that was continually upon
me, for, though I was not told my papa was dying, yet the daily
visits of the Lavenham doctor, then those of Dr Drake of Hadleigh,
and at last the summons of Dr Norford from Bury, told me of the
danger; and when on the Christmas morning I awoke and heard the
bells, my first fear was that they were tolling for his death. But on
Christmas-eve a special prayer-meeting was held in behalf of him
of whose recovery little hope was left, and he was restored, as it
seemed, at the supplication of the sympathizing Christian friends
who then assembled. On the same dreary evening, Dr Norford at
his bedside, after fixing his eyes upon him, and apparently with
deep attention watching his pulse for a long time, my mother
breathless on his eyes and lips, said cheerfully, "Well, sir, you are
not a dying man to-night." Oh! the moments of intense joy that
sometimes sparkle like stars in the midst of trouble! No seasons of
what is called happiness are half so delightful. It was a mournful
circumstance that within a month of this visit when Dr Norford's
words brought life to the household, he was himself removed by
sudden death. 

It was at the most alarming period of my father's terrible illness
that the mind of my dear mother seemed on a sudden to give way.
She had done and borne everything with indefatigable patience and
energy; a single egg in the day was for a length of time all the
sustenance she could take; she never left the room, and committed
the personal attendance requisite to no other hand; but on one of
those gloomy winter days she was suddenly missing. The alarm of
the whole house was very great. Mr Hickman was sent for, and at
length she was found alone in the solitary meadows, walking on
the brink of that dull river. He soothed and brought her home, but
for an hour or two she did not seem aware of the circumstances.
She presently entirely recovered, and never sank afterwards. 

So at last the winter of sorrow, deeper and more gloomy than that
of the season, began to break up. Relapse, it is true, came upon
relapse, and I well remember the undefined terror with which,
from time to time, I heard that word, but still our dear father was
evidently recovering. With spring came hope and glimpses of
happiness, and at last the workmen were summoned to the
abandoned house again. After five month's confinement, my father
once more appeared amongst us. There were large bills to pay
besides physician's fees, ś30 to the surgeon, the cost of a bushel of
phials left as perquisites on our hands innumerable derangements
to rectify, anxious work to resume, and strength wasted all but to
the grave to recover; but, nothing dismayed, he took his place
among various and pressing duties, with thankfulness, faith, and
hope.

At the mid-summer of 1793 our new house was deemed habitable,
and thither, as to a new life, we were delighted to remove. By his
unfailing contrivance, the house was made to suit us exactly, and
the garden, beautiful and pleasant, to our heart's desire. The best
parlour (a "drawing-room" was not then known in Lavenham), till
a little of the pecuniary pressure was worked down, was left
unfurnished at the disposal of "Ann and Jane" to whip their tops in,
but the common parlour was as pretty and comfortable as it could
be, with a door and a large bay window into the garden, and a
sliding panel for convenient communication with the kitchen.
China closets and store closets were large and commodious; all
was so convenient, so contrived for the comfort of every day, that
to live and die there was the reasonable hope, as it was the highest
ambition, of my parents. The garden, too, was an especially nice
one. Happily there were several well-grown trees already on the
ground, and a trellis arbour covered with honeysuckle, stood on a
rising ground underneath a picturesque old pear tree. Then there
was a long shrubbery walk, and an exit by a white gate and rails to
the common. A poultry yard, containing sometimes seventy fowls
of different sorts was on the premises behind, and an excavated
and paved pond for ducks. 

To this agreeable residence, however, my mother carried a state of
health, which effectually prevented her from enjoying it. Doubtless
the demands made on both mind and body during my father's
illness conduced to this result. But so it is, that in various ways it
almost uniformly happens that the entrance upon any scene from
which much has been anticipated is spoiled. The thorns and briars
threatened as the spontaneous growth of a sin-smitten world seem
here to be planted thickly, and with clear design to obstruct the
path. Yet, though assisted by these constantly recurring
intimations, how long it is before we learn effectually, if ever, that
the next projected change the home we have selected and
furnished for ourselves does not contain a single element of
substantial happiness; that it is not fitted to be our rest; that it
might be a greater curse than any other if we could contentedly
feel it to be such! Perhaps in time, after numerous
disappointments, we begin to spell out the meaning, to regard the
future with chastened expectation, and to enjoy with more sobriety
the comforts that are vouchsafed to us. Happy if such is the result
rather than a dull unthankful impatience!

But even if no obvious interference occurs with our designs, yet to
every spot whither we go we carry ourselves, and with ourselves
the root of evil. An ill-governed mind, and may we not say that
every mind is more or less so? cannot be entirely happy anywhere,
and blessed is he who can honestly say, "I have learned in
whatsoever state I am to be therewith content." Till then, 

"'Tis but a poor relief we gain,
To change the place and keep the pain."

But even the Christian heart, controlled and regulated as in some
degree it is, needs the constant memento. Some bitter must needs
be infused into every cup of enjoyment in order to sustain in the
spirit the recollection of its true character. There is but one remove
respecting which a hope without alloy may be safely indulged, if
even this always safely. 

The scene of comfort with the prospect of temporal prosperity now
before us, was such as fully to meet the quiet ambition of my
parents. I sometimes heard their speculations for the future, but a
change of style was not among them. Would that such were now
the spirit of the times! To live as they were, but without anxiety,
and to command all that was needed for the education of their
children, formed the limit of their wishes. Yet, even in such a
secluded sphere, we were not quite secure from moral hazards. 

Our nearest neighbour was the Rev. W. Cooke, whose tenants we
had recently been, and with his daughter, a sweet and beautiful girl
of our own age, we became acquainted at the dancing school, the
pupils of which consisted, besides ourselves, of the younger
Watkinsons, and a selection from the young gentlemen of the
school opposite. Our fat dancing-master for light as might be his
professional step, his reputed weight was eighteen stone came over
weekly from Bury to a room at the Swan Inn, and it has been no
small pleasure to me to meet in after years with one of my dancing
partners of those days, in General Addison, belonging to a Sudbury
family of Nonconformists, and who showed himself to the last not
ashamed of his colours. With the Cooke's we were soon at home.
He was quite a clergyman of the old style, slender in make, courtly
in manners, his wife something between a fashionable and a
motherly woman. The Favells, mother and daughter, generally
resided with them, and during vacations young Favell, a gay
good-natured Cambridge-man, fuller of amusing tricks than of
qualifications for the clerical profession, for which he was
training. In this family, while the elders took their evening game at
cards, the children amused themselves with an old pack in the
corner, and I became exceedingly fond of the diversion. About the
same time an elderly lady, a relative of my mother, whose sources
of amusement lay in narrow compass, visited us, and we were
allowed to borrow a pack of cards for her entertainment. They
were returned as soon as she left, not without urgent entreaty on
our part that we might have a pack of our own. My wise father
firmly refused. He believed in the "stitch in time." 

Bury St. Edmunds fair, was a mart for all the surrounding country.
There, not "dresses" but "gowns" were bought, destined not for the
dressmaker, but the "mantua-maker." Prints of 3s. 6d. per yard,
calendered, as we now do our chintzes and curtains, made
handsome "gowns" for a married lady, a square neck-handkerchief
of book muslin, duly clear-starched, being pinned over the dress. It
was one of our Autumn holidays to drive over in a post-chaise and
spend a day at Bury fair, making necessary purchases. There our
winter clothing, as well as my first wax doll, were bought. On one
occasion when, after dining at an inn, our chaise was ordered for
the return, troops of enviable holiday-makers were flocking into
the theatre opposite. We were urgent again, "just for once," but
again my father refused. In these cases the narrow end of the
wedge may have been in his mind, and the remembrance may be
worth preserving. 

At the Watkinsons', grave people as they were, there were
Christmas dances, and of course at the Cookes', but to these we
were too young to be invited. 

On one occasion, however, we were allowed, under my mother's
wing, to go to what was called a dance. It was at a farm house, to
the family of which we had been introduced under circumstances
illustrating the habits of the place and time. The small-pox was not
allowed to make its appearance within an inhabited district. A
singularly deplorable building, at a short distance on the road to
Bury, was appropriated to the reception of cases occuring among
the poor of Lavenham; nor shall I forget the feeling of mingled
terror and mystery with which we regarded it, if ever we passed
within sight of this forlorn receptacle of disease and misery. But
from the same rule, when respectable families had resolved on
innoculation, it was necessary to take lodgings for the purpose at a
distance from the town. Mr Coe, of the farm house referred to, was
about to innoculate his own family, and it was decided that my
mother and I should remove thither, in charge of my three young
brothers, that they might submit to the anxious process. (My sister
and I had passed favourably through it in London.) As none 
throughout the household were seriously ill, the sojourn amongst
them was more of a holiday than anything else; and now at
Christmas we were invited to the dance, where no less than sixty
rural belles and beaux assembled. The chamber of arrival was
thickly strewn with curl papers, my own hair was dressed as a wig
two or three inches deep, hanging far down the back, and covering
the shoulders from side to side, a singular fashion which I have
lived to see re-appear among my grandchildren. Perhaps I had
better confess that, though having learned to dance, an advantage
not general to the company, I might have expected some
appreciation as a partner, the full-formed easy figures, glowing
complexions, and merry eyes of the farmer's daughters, were
undeniably more in request. There was one among them that, if my
impressions are correct, was in all respects the most beautiful
young woman I have ever seen. I am now in my eightieth year,
where is she? Her history, whatever it has been, we may be almost
sure is closed. To me it is very impressive to review the associates
of my chilhood with the though still existing gone somewhere but
whither? 

I have frequently adverted to a nervousness of imagination, from
which, indeed, I have suffered through life. The mention of
Hadleigh, the residence of Dr Drake, of literary celebrity, recals to
my mind a torment of my childhood, with which one of the
martyr-worthies of the reign of Queen Mary, Dr Rowland Taylor,
who was rector of that place, had some connection. Low, sloping
hills rise on almost every side of Hadleigh, and from their summits
may be seen the winding river, the green meadows, the substantial
bridge, and the ancient houses of the town; a steep lane, between
banks, leads up to Oldham Common, where an old rude stone
bears this inscription: 

1555.

DR. TAYLOR,

Defending that was goode,
At this place left his Blode.

He had been taken to London and imprisoned in the Compter.
After degradation by Bishop Bonner, and an affecting interview
that evening with his wife and children, the sheriff and his officers
led him forth in total darkness, for it was two o'clock on the
morning of the 6th of February, to the Woolsack Inn in Aldgate,
"but" here I quote from a brief biography "as he passes through St.
Botolph's Churchyard, his wife and two little girls are waiting,
shivering with cold. They spring out to meet him, and they four
kneel down to pray for the last time. He gives them parting counsel
and his blessing, kisses his children and his wife, and the brave
woman says, 'God be with thee, dear husband, I will, by God's
grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.' At this spectacle the sheriff weeps,
and the officers, strong men as they are, are bowed down. And
now, committed to the custody of the sheriff of Essex, and guarded
by yeomen and officers, the prisoner is placed on horseback, and
the cavalcade moves on to Brentwood, to Chelmsford, and so to
Lavenham. Two days are spent at Lavenham, the last halting-place.
Many gentlemen assemble there and try to turn him to Popery.
Pardon, preferment, even a bishopric are offered him, but all in
vain." And so he passes on to Oldham Common, but a few miles
off, is chained to the stake, and breathes out his last words amidst
the flames, 'Father, for Jesus' sake, receive my soul.' " 

Familiar with this mournful narrative, a nervous terror fell upon
me whenever I had to pass the old brick building in which Dr
Taylor was said to have been confined. It stood at some distance
behind a wall, so that I could see little of it except the upper storey
in my time, I fancy, a hay loft. In this was an opening, not exactly a
window, but an orifice closed by shutters of time-blackened
boards, sometimes left open, and disclosing a dark unknown  the
very chamber, as I either heard or supposed, in which the martyr
had been immured! Whenever I had to pass this haunted spot
alone, I well remember that I always ran. You will wonder that I
have not been frightened to death long ago. You will understand,
at least, why I so regularly refuse to listen to a ghost story. 

We had, in our new house, a large room, running the entire length
of one part of the building, this was appropriated to business. My
father's high desk was placed at the upper end; a row of windows
facing the yard, was occupied by the apprentices, and another,
overlooking the garden, was filled by the children pursuing their
education, with whom, two or three times a week, were associated
some of the juniors of the Watkinson family, to share advantages
which were now well understood by our neighbours. One young
lady became an inmate for a time, who was endeavouring to learn
the art of Engraving, to which, however, neither her taste nor her
health proved equal. Another addition, too, was made about this
time, in a Mrs Salmon, a sister of the Dr Norford who has been
mentioned, Her history was singular and mournful. Early in life,
she had been on the stage, had married an officer, and
accompanied him to America during the war there; she was now a
widow, in nearly destitute circumstances, and having been brought
through accumulated trials to her "right mind," had fallen, in some
way, among the Christian people at Lavenham. My father and
mother, much interested in her condition, offered her a temporary
home under their roof, and her lively manners and variety of
anecdote, rendered her a not undesirable guest. Our house was thus
a scene of active and intelligent industry, and our circle not
wanting in diversity of interest, yet notwithstanding our numerous
household (to which Nathan Branwhite was now added), we never
kept more than one servant! Incredible, and therefore impossible it
would be thought now, yet the home of my childhood was not
disorderly. We were always punctual as to time as well as early, in
part, perhaps, the secret of this creditable state of things; and
though, during the ten years at Lavenham, we had our share of
indifferent or unworthy servants, we had the good fortune to have,
at least, two who deserved the favourable mention of them by my
mother, in her "Present to a Young Servant," under the names of
Susan Gardener and Sarah Leven; both remained with us till they
married, and the latter came occasionally afterwards. Needlework
was never put out, but the abundant ornament now thought
necessary for children, was happily not thought so then. My
mother used to say that "a child is pretty enough without
trimmings." 

Yet, with all this activity, my mother suffered constant pain, and at
this time, though drives two or three times a week were
recommended, the jolt over a small stone in the road was almost
more than she could bear. It was determined, therefore, that
leaving Mrs Salmon to act as housekeeper, she should visit
London, and take the best advice there. My father, mother, and I,
then twelve years old, made up the party, and remained in lodgings
at Islington about a month. She derived, however, little benefit
from the treatment prescribed. But it was at this time that I was
first introduced to the valued friends of my youth, Susan and Luck
Conder, the only surviving children of Mr S. Conder of Clapton. A
distance of more than half a century, and half the globe, has not yet
severed associations then formed. Their father and mother, even
before their marriage, had been the friends of both my parents, and
it gives me pleasure to feel that the entail has not yet been cut off.
The changes of situation, and too often of feeling which frequently
terminate early friendships, are, to me, peculiarly painful to
contemplate. It is true that, in many instances, the local
associations of childhood and youth are better dropped than
continued; moral differences may widen, and tastes so opposite
may develope themselves, that continued intimacy might be as
burdensome as dangerous. But where it is only that one party has
been fortunate, the other unfortunate, the separation is mournful
indeed. How much more so when the inequality divides the
brothers and sisters of the same nursery!

I please myself in the belief that, among you, dear children, there
is a feeling too deeply fraternal and sisterly to fear much from the
blights of time or circumstance. Still, who shall predict the
irritations, supposed or actual wrongs, which, as life sweeps
roughly over you, may interrupt the ha