In 1837 the railways which unite the country under the title of the Great Eastern had not come into existence. All is changed in East Anglia except the boys. “You have seen a good many changes in your time,” said the young curate to the old village clerk. “Yes,” was the reply; “everything is changed except the boys, and they’re allus the same.” I fear the boys are as troublesome as ever—perhaps a little more so now, when you cannot touch them with a stick, which any one might do years ago. When we caught a boy up to mischief a stick did a deal of good in the good old times that are gone never to return. In connection with literature one naturally turns to the Bungay Printing Press, at the head of which was John Childs, who assembled round his hospitable board at Bungay many celebrated people, and to whom at a later period Daniel O’Connell paid a visit. It was Childs who gave to the poor student cheap editions of standard works such as Burke and Gibbon and Bacon. It was he who went to Ipswich Gaol rather than pay Church Rates. It was he who was one of the first to attack the Bible printing monopoly, and thus to flood the land with cheap Bibles and Testaments. A self-made man, almost Napoleonic in appearance, with a habit of blurting out sharp cynicisms and original epigrams, rather than conversing. He was a great phrenologist, and I well remember how I, a raw lad, rather trembled in his presence as I saw his dark, keen eyes directed towards that part of my person where the brains are supposed to be. I imagine the result was favourable, as at a later time I spent many a pleasant hour in his dining-room, gathering wisdom from his after-dinner talk, and inspiration from his port—as good as that immortalised by Tennyson. Mr. Childs had a numerous and handsome family, most of whom died after arriving at manhood. His daughter, who to great personal charms added much of her father’s intellect, did not live long after her marriage, leaving one son, a leading partner in the great City firm of solicitors, Ashurst, Morris, and Crisp. After John Childs, of Bungay, I may mention another East Anglian—D. Whittle Harvey, who was a power in his party and among the London cabbies—to whom the London cabby owes his badge V.R.—which, as one of them sagely remarked, was supposed to signify “Whittle ’Arvey,” an etymology at any rate not worse than that of the savant who in his wisdom derived gherkin from Jeremiah King. In 1837 Mr. Johnson Fox, born at Uggeshall, near Wangford—better known afterwards as the Norwich “Weaver Boy,” the “Publicola” of _The Weekly Dispatch_—the great orator of the Anti-Corn Law League, was preaching in the Unitarian Chapel, South Place, Finsbury, and a leading man in London literary society. One of the best-known men in East Anglia was Allan Ransome, of Ipswich, the young Quaker, who was on very friendly terms with the Strickland family, who cultivated literature and business with equal zest. Nor, in this