in commerce and famed for its oysters, and if not quite up to the standard of Dr. W. B. Richardson, I must give its municipal authorities credit for doing the best they can, to bring it up to our modern ideas of sanitary excellence. It has lately taken to making shoes in the swiftest manner possible, and threatens to be a formidable rival to Northampton, and assuredly, when I hear of the money made by many of its citizens, who, starting with the proverbial half-crown, have now accumulated handsome fortunes, I feel justified in asserting that grass does not grow in its streets. The religious history of Colchester is deeply interesting. That unfortunate Puritan, Bastwicke lived at the Red House, Red Lane. Matthew Newcomen, one of the Puritan divines who took part in the Smectymnian Controversy, was the son of a rector of Trinity. His brother Thomas, a Royalist, lived to be a Prebendary at Lincoln at the Restoration. Colchester has done much for Nonconformity. It was one of the earliest cities to do battle for religious freedom and the rights of conscience. As far back as 1428 we find the keeper of Colchester Castle empowered to search out and imprison persons suspected of “heresie or Lollardie.” In Queen Mary’s days fourteen men and eight women were brought from Colchester to London like a flock of sheep, but bound or chained together, to appear before Bonner, on account of religion; but several were burnt there at different times. The first certain account of the Baptists of Colchester is that of Thomas Lamb, about the year 1630, who was one of the victims of Archbishop Laud. For some time Baptists and Pædo-Baptists seem to have worshipped together here; they in time separated, and the present flourishing cause, under Rev. E. Spurrier, celebrated its bi-centenary last year. From a MS. account in Dr. Williams’s library, we learn that in 1715 there were three Non-conformist congregations in Colchester—one Independant, one Presbyterian (with a total of 1,500 hearers), and one Baptist (with 200). In the schoolroom of the Baptist church at Eld-street is a fine portrait of the Captain Murrell whose noble rescue of a shipwrecked crew in a stormy sea was the admiration of the whole civilised world a year or two since. And it rightly hangs there, for as a boy he was brought up in its Sunday-school. Close to the Baptist church in Eld-lane is the well-known Congregational church, a new and handsome structure, of which Rev. T. Robinson is the pastor.