and whose ‘Soul Prosperity,’ a volume of sober prose, reached a second edition. His grandson, Mr. J. R. Robinson, now the energetic manager of the _Daily News_, may be said to have achieved a position in the world of London of which his simple-hearted and deeply-devotional grandfather could never have dreamed. As I was the son of a brother minister, Mr. Dennant’s house was open to myself and Thompson, though we did not go there on the particular day of which I write. The leading tradesman of the town was a Liberal, and had at least one pretty daughter, and there we went. Most of the day, however, we mixed with the mob which crowded round, while the voters—you may be sure, not all of them sober—were brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly publication of the state of the poll—more or less unreliable, but, nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which was cheered by his friends and howled at derisively by his foes, while the horses were being changed, and then drove off at a gallop to make the same display and to undergo the same ordeal elsewhere! To be sure, there was a little rough play; now and then a rush was made by nobody in particular, and for no particular reason; or, again, an indiscreet voter—rendered additionally so by indulgence in beer—gave occasion for offence; but really, beyond a scrimmage, a hat broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to do so kept open house, and at every available window were the bright, beaming faces of the Suffolk fair—oh, they were jolly, those election days of old! Well, in East Anglia, as elsewhere, spite of the parsons, spite of the landlords, spite of the slavery of old custom, spite of old traditions, the freeholders voted Reform, and Reform was won, and everyone believed that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. In ten years, I heard people say, there would be no tithes for the farmer to pay, and welcome was the announcement; for then, as now, the agricultural interest was depressed, and the farmer was a ruined man. Now one takes but a languid interest in the word Reform, but then it stirred the hearts of the people; and how they celebrated their victory, how they hoisted flags and got up processions and made speeches, and feasted and hurrahed, ’twere tedious to tell. All over the land the people rejoiced with exceeding joy. Old things, they believed, had passed away—all things had