In the good old city of Norwich. I passed a year as an apprentice, in what was then known as London Lane. It was a time of real growth to me mentally. I had a bedroom to myself; in reality it was a closet. I had access to a cheap library, where I was enabled to take my fill, and did a good deal of miscellaneous study. I would have joined the Mechanics’ Institute, where they had debates, but the people with whom I lived were orthodox Dissenters, and were rather afraid of my embracing Unitarian principles. The fear was, I think, groundless. At any rate, one of the most distinguished debaters was Mr. Jacob Henry Tillett, afterwards M.P., then in a lawyer’s office; and another was his friend Joseph Pigg, who became a Congregational minister, but did not live to old age. Another of the lot—who was a great friend of Pigg’s—was Bolingbroke Woodward, who was, I think, in a bank, from which he went to Highbury, thence as a Congregational minister to Wortwell, near Harleston, and died librarian to the Queen. Evidently there was no necessary connection, as the people where I lived thought, between debating and embracing Unitarian principles.
Norwich seemed to me a wonderful city. I had already visited the place at the time when it celebrated the passing of the Reform Bill, when there was by day a grand procession, and a grand dinner in the open air; where a friend, who knew what boys liked, gave me a slice of plum pudding served up on the occasion; and then in the evening there were fireworks, the first I had ever seen, on the Castle Hill. It was a long ride from our village, and we had to travel by the carrier’s cart, drawn by two horses, and sit beneath the roof on the top of the luggage and baggage, for we stopped everywhere to pick up parcels. The passengers when seated endeavoured to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow. Norwich at that time had a literary reputation, and it seemed to me there were giants in the land in those days. One I remember was the Rev. John Kinghorn, a great light among the Baptists, and whom, with his spare figure and primitive costume, I always confounded with John the Baptist. Another distinguished personage was William Youngman, at whose house my father spent a good deal of time, engaged in the hot disputation in which that grand old Norwich worthy always delighted. As a boy, I remember I trembled as the discussion went on, for