a large proportion of the things which were said and admired then would be regarded as simply ridiculous now. No reference has been made to the States of America. The United States had no existence in Watts’ day—America was regarded then much as we regard Australia now. Watts had many friends there, and much interesting correspondence exists between them; especially interesting it is to find in the history of Harvard University that Watts’ name occurs as one of its early benefactors. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. Return to Stoke Newington. It would be a very difficult thing to realize now in the suburb of Stoke Newington, the Stoke Newington of Isaac Watts’ day. The mighty city has absorbed it; the lanes, the fields, the woods, the old bridge, the old church, and the very river have vanished. It must have been a very pretty little rural village, comprised in a small cluster of houses; it may even be spoken of as a kind of sequestered hermitage, amidst whose shades those who desired it might find, if the stillness of nature could give it, perfect peace. Even more than forty years after Watts’ death there were only one hundred and ninety-five houses; within the memory of old inhabitants it was still but a village. In Watts’ day it was probably surrounded by trees; a short time before he took up his residence there, there were seventy-seven acres of woodland in demesne, part of the ancient forest of Middlesex, so justifying its name from Stoke, a wood (_Stoke Newington_, the new little town in the wood). A very pleasant retreat, the like of which we should have to look a long way from any London suburb to discover now. The ancient houses have disappeared from the present vicinity, and two of the last, and those in which Watts passed his early and his later age, the houses of Hartopp and Abney, have only just been pulled down. We have noticed the history of Fleetwood’s house, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but tradition assigns to some old houses in the village, called the “Bishop’s Place,” the frequent visits of Henry VIII., and here, on a part of these premises, was born Samuel Rogers, the poet; and it is a singular and noticeable thing, that as the father of the poet died in 1793, and had lived the greater part of his life at Stoke Newington, those who knew the poet talked with a man who was the child of one who had probably not only seen but talked with Isaac Watts. There is a spot in Stoke Newington still called “King Henry’s Walk,” and when the premises supposed to be his retreat were taken down, parts of the old wainscot were found to be richly gilt and ornamented with paintings, although, indeed, almost obliterated.