Chapter II: Preface: To the Second Edition

The chapters of which this little work consists originally appeared in the _Christian World Magazine_, where they were so fortunate as to attract favourable notice, and from which they are now reprinted, with a few slight additions, by permission of the Editor. In bringing out a second edition, I have incorporated the substance of other articles originally written for local journals. It is to be hoped, touching as they do a theme not easily exhausted, but always interesting to East Anglians, that they may help to sustain that love of one's county which, alas! like the love of country, is a matter reckoned to be of little importance in these cosmopolitan days, but which, nevertheless, has had not a little share in the formation of that national greatness and glory in which at all times Englishmen believe.

One word more. I have retained some strictures on the clergy of East Anglia, partly because they were true at the time to which I refer, and partly because it gives me pleasure to own that they are not so now. The Church of England clergyman of to-day is an immense improvement on that of my youth. In ability, in devotion to the duties of his calling, in intelligence, in self-denial, in zeal, he is equal to the clergy of any other denomination. If he has lost his hold upon Hodge, that, at any rate, is not his fault.

CLACTON-ON-SEA,
_January_, 1893.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.

A SUFFOLK VILLAGE. Distinguished people born there--Its Puritans and 1 Nonconformists--The country round Covehithe--Southwold--Suffolk dialect--The Great Eastern Railway CHAPTER II.

THE STRICKLANDS.
Reydon Hall--The clergy--Pakefield--Social life in a village 37
CHAPTER III.

LOWESTOFT.
Yarmouth bloaters--George Borrow--The town fifty years 54
ago--The distinguished natives
CHAPTER IV.

POLITICS AND THEOLOGY.
Homerton academy--W. Johnson Fox, M.P.--Politics in 89
1830--Anti-Corn Law speeches--Wonderful oratory
CHAPTER V.

BUNGAY AND ITS PEOPLE.
Bungay Nonconformity--Hannah More--The Childses--The Queen's 122
Librarian--Prince Albert
CHAPTER VI.

A CELEBRATED NORFOLK TOWN.
Great Yarmouth Nonconformists--Intellectual life--Dawson 153
Turner--Astley Cooper--Hudson Gurney--Mrs. Bendish
CHAPTER VII.

THE NORFOLK CAPITAL. Brigg's Lane--The carrier's cart--Reform demonstration--The 185 old dragon--Chairing M.P.'s--Hornbutton Jack--Norwich artists and literati--Quakers and Nonconformists CHAPTER VIII.

THE SUFFOLK CAPITAL.
The Orwell--The Sparrows--Ipswich 226
notabilities--Gainsborough--Medical men--Nonconformists
CHAPTER IX.

AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN.
Woodbridge and the country round--Bernard Barton--Dr. 252
Lankester--An old Noncon.
CHAPTER X.

MILTON'S SUFFOLK SCHOOLMASTER. Stowmarket--The Rev. Thomas Young--Bishop Hall and the 283 Smectymnian divines--Milton's mulberry-tree--Suffolk relationships CHAPTER XI.

IN CONSTABLE'S COUNTY.
East Bergholt--The Valley of the Stour--Painting from 311
nature--East Anglian girls
CHAPTER XII.

EAST ANGLIAN WORTHIES. Suffolk cheese--Danes, Saxons, and Normans--Philosophers and 320 statesmen--Artists and literati