His parents were members of the Congregational Chapel in the place, and their son was a constant attendant at the Sunday school, first as a scholar and afterwards as a teacher. When he was about 17 or 18 years of age, one of his relatives, and the then master of the British School in the place, conceived the idea of establishing a Mechanics' Institute. Vince joined the movement with ardour, and the little institution was soon an accomplished fact. A grammar class, to which Vince attached himself, was very popular among the young men of the town, and they soon after established a debating club. Here the latent talents in Vince developed themselves. He became a fluent speaker, and was soon asked to deliver a lecture. Being half a poet himself, he chose Poetry as his topic, and seems to have given himself up to the preparation of his subject with a determination to succeed. One of his old I companions (whose towering head, by the way, would be a splendid artist's "study" for an apostle) told me that at this time they read together "Paradise Lost," a great part of which he said he could still repeat from memory. Vince used to declaim aloud the "bits" that pleased him, and "he was never tired" of the passage in the tenth book, where the poet, describing the change which followed the Fall, says-- "Some say He bid His angels turn askance The poles of Earth some ten degrees or more From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe,... ...to bring in change Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with verdant flowers, Equal in days and nights." The condition of his mind at this time was so eloquently described to me by this friend, that I shall quote his words as I took them down from his own lips: "To ordinary appearance his mind was like a common flower; with beauty, perhaps, that would not catch the unobservant eye; but intimate as I was, I could discover in his homely talk, beauties that those who only knew him slightly could not observe, because he kept his petals closed. He did not open to many, but I saw, or thought I saw, the germs of what he afterwards became."