connection with the Earlham family. It has given a colour to my life. Its influence was most positive, and pregnant with good at that critical period between school and manhood. They were eager to improve; I caught the infection. I was resolved to please them, and in the college at Dublin, at a distance from all my friends and all control, their influence and the desire to please them kept me hard at my books, and sweetened the task they gave. The distinctions I gained at college (little valuable as distinctions, but valuable because habits of industry, perseverance and resolution were necessary to attain them)—these boyish distinctions were exclusively the result of the animating passion in my mind to carry back to them the prizes which they prompted and enabled me to win.’ Wilberforce, when he was staying at Lowestoft in 1816, wrote: ‘I am still full of Earlham and its excellent inhabitants. One of our great astronomers stated it as probable there may be stars whose light has been travelling to us from the Creation, and has not yet reached our little planet. In the Earlham family a new constellation has broken in upon us, for which you must invent a name, as you are fond of star-gazing, and if it indicates a little monstrosity (as they are apt to give the collection of stars the names of strange creatures—dragons, bears, etc.), the various stars of which the Earlham assemblage is made,’ continues Wilberforce, ‘will include also much to be respected and loved.’ At that time Mrs. Opie was one of the Norwich stars. Caroline Fox, who went to dine with her described her as in great force and really jolly. ‘She is enthusiastic about Father Mathew, reads Dickens voraciously, takes to Carlyle, but thinks his appearance rather against him—talks much and with great spirit of people, but never ill-naturedly.’ ‘Norwich,’ as described by Camden, ‘on account of its wealth, populousness, neatness of buildings, beautiful churches, with the number of them—for it has a matter of fifty parishes—as also the industry of its citizens, loyalty to their Prince, is to be reckoned among the most considerable cities in Britain. It was fortified with walls that have a great many turrets and eleven gates.’ Camden, quoting one writer after another, adds the eulogy of Andrew Johnston, a Scotchman, as follows: ‘A town whose stately piles and happy seat Her citizens and strangers both delight; Whose tedious siege and plunder made her bear In Norman battles an unhappy share, And feel the sad effects of dreadful war. These storms o’erblown, now blest with constant peace, She saw her riches and her trade increase. State here by wealth, by beauty yet undone, How blest if vain excess be yet unknown! So fully is she from herself supplied That England while she stands can never want a head.’