The neighbourhood of London, to which Isaac Watts removed from Southampton for the purpose of completing his studies, and preparing for the work of the ministry, was Stoke Newington, and in that neighbourhood he was destined to pass the greater part of his life. It was probably even then pervaded, as for a long time before and ever since, by an atmosphere of mild but consistent Nonconformity; the academy in which he studied was beneath the superintendence of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, the pastor of the Independent Church assembling in Girdlers’ Hall, in the City. It was probably one of the most considerable of the time, and appears to have succeeded to one also well known upon the same spot, of which the principal was the Rev. Charles Morton. Here studied the celebrated Daniel Defoe, also originally intended for the Nonconformist pulpit, as he says in one of his reviews: “It is not often I trouble you with any of my divinity; the pulpit is none of my office. It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that sacred employ.” The academy had a good reputation, and the effort which old Samuel Wesley had made to sully its fair fame only reflected his own dishonour, and left it untarnished. Charles Morton was one of those obscure but remarkable men in which our country at that time was so rich. He was descended from a singularly distinguished family—that of Cardinal Morton, Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham, and many other distinguished men. He took his degree of M.A. at Wadham College, Oxford, and became, and continued until the Act of Uniformity, rector of Blisland, in Cornwall; after preaching for a short time at St. Ives he removed to London, and shortly after opened an academy on Newington Green. Defoe pronounces the highest encomiums upon him and his method as a tutor; and Samuel Wesley, in the midst of his bitterness and ungracious flippancy—for he had been maintained on the foundation under the idea of entering the Nonconformist ministry—ceases from his abuse to honour the memory of his master; he, however, after having trained several men who became eminent in their day, teased by continued persecution, passed over to America; there his fame had preceded him; there he became pastor of a church in Charlestown, and Vice-president of Harvard University.[5]