THE SUFFOLK CAPITAL. The Orwell—The Sparrows—Ipswich 226 notabilities—Gainsborough—Medical men—Nonconformists CHAPTER IX. AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN. Woodbridge and the country round—Bernard Barton—Dr. 252 Lankester—An old Noncon. CHAPTER X. MILTON’S SUFFOLK SCHOOLMASTER. Stowmarket—The Rev. Thomas Young—Bishop Hall and the 283 Smectymnian divines—Milton’s mulberry-tree—Suffolk relationships CHAPTER XI. IN CONSTABLE’S COUNTY. East Bergholt—The Valley of the Stour—Painting from 311 nature—East Anglian girls CHAPTER XII. EAST ANGLIAN WORTHIES. Suffolk cheese—Danes, Saxons, and Normans—Philosophers and 320 statesmen—Artists and literati CHAPTER I. A SUFFOLK VILLAGE. Distinguished people born there—Its Puritans and Nonconformists—The country round Covehithe—Southwold—Suffolk dialect—The Great Eastern Railway. In his published Memoirs, the great Metternich observes that if he had never been born he never could have loved or hated. Following so illustrious a precedent, I may observe that if I had not been born in East Anglia I never could have been an East Anglian. Whether I should have been wiser or better off had I been born elsewhere, is an interesting question, which, however, it is to be hoped the public will forgive me if I decline to discuss on the present occasion. In a paper bearing the date of 1667, a Samuel Baker, of Wattisfield Hall, writes: ‘I was born at a village called Wrentham, which place I cannot pass by the mention of without saying thus much, that religion has there flourished longer, and that in much piety; the Gospel and grace of it have been more powerfully and clearly preached, and more generally received; the professors of it have been more sound in the matter and open and steadfast in the profession of it in an hour of temptation, have manifested a greater oneness amongst themselves and have been more eminently preserved from enemies without (albeit they dwell where Satan’s seat is encompassed with his malice and rage), than I think in any village of the like capacity in England; which I speak as my duty to the place, but to my particular shame rather than otherwise, that such a dry and barren plant should spring out of such a soil.’ I resemble this worthy Mr. Baker in two respects. In the first place, I was born at Wrentham, though at a considerably later period of time than 1667; and, secondly, if he was a barren plant—he of whom we read, in Harmer’s Miscellaneous Works, that ‘he was a gentleman of fortune and education, very zealous for the Congregational plan of church government and discipline, and a sufferer in its bonds for a good conscience’—what am I?