Carlile received all the education that village free schools could afford. The educational routine where his own Gifford had before been a scholar, was confined to writing, arithmetic, and sufficient Latin to read a physician’s prescription. His first place seems to have been with Mr. Lee, chemist and druggist, in Exeter, but, being set to do things which he deemed derogatory to one who was able to read a physician’s prescription, he left the shop after four months’ service. Being too much of a man to go to school again, he lived idly three months, amusing himself with colouring pictures to sell in his mother’s shop. His mother’s principal wholesale customers were the firm of Gifford and Co., which consisted of the brothers of that Attorney-General who had such extensive dealings with the son afterwards, in a different line. At the pressing wish of Carlile’s mother, he was apprenticed to a business which he never liked, that of tinplate working, and, like Bunyan, he became a tinman. He served seven years and three months to a Mr. Cummings, whom he has described as a hard master, as one who considered five or six hours for sleep all the recreation necessary for his youths. Carlile had no knowledge then of the ‘Rights of Man,’ but he betrayed some knowledge of the rights of apprentices,(3) and his impatience under injustice was then manifested, as his term of service was one series of conspiracies, rebellions, and battles. On being relieved from this worse than seven years’ imprisonment, he resolved to follow that business no longer than he should be compelled. His ambition then was to get his living by his pen. 1. Gauntlet, No. 8, p. 113. 2. Repub. vol. 5, p. 134. 3. Republican, vol. ii. pp. 226-7. The office of an exciseman, which was offered him, he refused, remembering the fate of his father, and continued to follow his business, as journeyman tinman, in various parts of the country, and in London, where he first arrived in February, 1811. He returned to Exeter the same year. In 1813, we find him in London again, working at Benham and Sons, Blackfriars Road. A short sojourn in Gosport, in the previous year 1812, led to his acquaintance with the person who became, after two months’ courtship, Mrs. Carlile. He was at that time twenty-three, and she thirty years of age. Mrs. Carlile was not without accomplishments as to personal appearance; and temper excepted, was not without most of the qualifications necessary to a good tradesman’s wife.(1)