for their audience, and if I ever worked hard as a boy, it was to get signatures to anti-slavery petitions. Naturally, a Church parson came to regard all that was attacked by Reformers as a bulwark of the Establishment, and in our part the Meetingers’ were the sole friends of the slave. As was to be expected, the reading of the village was of the most limited description. It is true we children jumped for joy as once a month came the carrier’s cart from Beccles, with the books for the club—the _Evangelical Magazine_, for all the principal families of the congregation, and the _Penny Magazine_ and _Chambers’s Journal_—then but in their infancy—for ourselves; but, apart from that, there was no reading worth mentioning. That which most astonishes the tourist in Ireland is the way in which people read the newspapers. In our Suffolk village the very reverse was the case, partly because there were few newspapers to read, partly because there were few to read them, and partly because they were dear to buy. The one paper which we took in was the _Suffolk Chronicle_, which made its appearance on Saturday morning, the price of which was sixpence, and which was edited by a sturdy Radical of the name of King, who to the last held to the belief that to have a London letter full of literary or critical talk for the Suffolk farmers was, not to put too fine a point on it, to throw pearls before swine. And perhaps he was right. I can well remember, when one of my early poetical contributions appeared in its columns, how a fear was expressed to me by a farmer’s widow in our parish, lest ‘it had cost me a lot o’ money’ to have that effort of my muse in print. Mr. Childs, of Bungay, had many experiences, equally rustic and still more illustrative of the simplicity of the class. Once upon a time one of them came in a great state of excitement for a copy of the ‘Life of Mr. General Gazetteer.’ On another occasion a farmer’s wife came in search of a Testament. She wanted it directly, and she wanted it of a large type. A specimen was selected, which met with the worthy woman’s approval. But the question was, could she have it in half an hour, as she would be away for that time shopping in the town, and would call for it on her return. She was told that she could, and great was her astonishment when, on calling on her return for the Testament, there it was, printed in the particular type she had selected, ready for her use.