The majority of modern inventions were unknown, or in their infancy, whilst life in general went on very much in the happy-go-lucky fashion characteristic of another age. Law and order, it is true, exercised a sort of sway, but the former, if just, was often terribly cruel, whilst the latter was, by comparison with to-day, only indifferently maintained. Three years after I was born our excellent modern police had been established by Sir Robert Peel, but the county police in Norfolk were only constituted some ten years later—a salutary innovation which, strangely enough, was not greeted with universal approbation. In 1842, indeed, when the new guardians of law and order had already done duty for three years, my father, at a meeting of the county magistrates at Norwich, presented a petition, signed by himself and a large number of other landowners, praying for some reduction or even the abolition of the police force, on the ground that it produced nothing but expense, and caused people to be prosecuted for offences of a very trivial nature. My father, of course, disliked the new police force principally on account of its being an innovation, for, a staunch Conservative, he opposed changes of any kind whatever, including railroads, which were his special abomination. The advent of the railway in Norfolk was, I remember, a depressing blow to him, and he did all he could to keep the line outside the borders of his property so that he might forget its existence. Direct railway communication between London and Norwich was not established till 1845, the first through train starting from Trowse on the morning of June 30 of that year. In January 1846 all the coaches between Norwich and London had ceased to run, the last of them to go being the mail through Bury St. Edmunds. In the ’forties came the railway mania, when many of a speculative disposition were completely carried away by dreams of immediate and colossal wealth. Within a year or two, however, a dreadful awakening was the lot of those who had gambled in railway shares, which went down faster than they had risen, a large number of people being completely ruined, amongst them the great Hudson himself. During the time when things were going well, flattery and praise were heaped upon him and he was the recipient of several public testimonials; but after the disastrous fall in railway shares he at once became the principal object of an outburst of widespread popular indignation.