The peculiarities of East Anglia, both inland and on the coast, are reflected in its inhabitants. It is a country which by its isolation has fostered strong originality in all classes, manifesting itself frequently in a species of coarseness of fibre and sensibility. The people have not a character for high intelligence, at any rate in Suffolk, where “silly” is the epithet applied to the county. Despite this fact perhaps no part of Great Britain has produced so many “worthies” of the highest order. In almost every one of these the “animal” is very strong and the intelligence is dominated by practical considerations. Suffolk and Norfolk respectively have bred perhaps the two greatest of English statesmen--Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Robert Walpole. Wolsey impressed his contemporaries by his native force and arrogance; and Bishop Creighton explains in his biography of him how sane a view he took of his country’s position in regard to the politics of Europe. Walpole, with the tastes of a boorish squire, little delicacy of mind, and a cynical contempt for mankind, was an unrivalled financier and minister in days of material prosperity. In the forefront among the pioneers of English science stands the famous Suffolk name of Bacon. In his great achievements and his equally serious faults Francis Bacon, Viscount Verulam, is an East Anglian. His luminous mind is seen in the singularly lucid English in which his thoughts are expressed, his rough common-sense reveals itself in the way in which he brushes aside the speculative theories of the philosophers, and goes directly for results based on practical experiment. And on the darker side, the unscrupulous way in which he crushed friend and foe alike in order to attain the position, which his genius entitled him to take in the country, discloses the same lack of sensibility which we frequently see in the East Anglian character. Among the great judges few take a higher place than Lord Thurlow. Scarcely anyone could inspire such fear by the mere force of his personality than he. Whether in the House of Lords, when he crushed the Duke of Grafton, who twitted him with being a _novus homo_; or in the law courts; or at his own table in private life, where, in his old age, he could make the greatest wits of the day retire in discomfiture, he shewed himself an antagonist to be dreaded. Yet, as Crabbe attests, under that rough exterior beat a kind heart. Not only the genius of Nelson, the son of a Norfolk Rector, as well as the moral failure which cast a stain on the unparalleled lustre of his name, may be traceable to his native soil. Even to-day there is one to whom England looks with confidence, though his stern practical ability inspires but little affection, among whose proud and well-deserved titles is the name of his mother’s home, an out-of-the-way Suffolk village; for on entering the peerage Earl Kitchener assumed the style of Baron Kitchener of Khartoum and Aspal.[11]