We have another market which has grown up, and that is the present Wednesday Market on the Market Place, which I think is one of the greatest curiosities that ever comes under one’s notice. It does no harm to anyone. I went there recently, and I saw an extraordinary medley of things exposed for sale. I wondered at first if they were to be given away! I could understand anybody wishing to sell them, but wondered who could wish to buy them. It is one of the things no one can understand. But it affords the means of getting rid of most undesirable things, call them furniture, or anything else! It puts me in mind of a shop in the Market Place at Great Yarmouth, where they say you may buy anything. A visitor, a clergyman, was told he could get anything he wanted. He said, “I want a pulpit.” “Well,” his friend said, “go in and try.” He went in and said, “Do you happen to have a pulpit?” and they said, “Well, we do happen to have a pulpit.” And I think I have seen everything in our Wednesday’s Market except that. I have not seen anything so useful as a pulpit!
I have spoken of our accommodation for the living. What do we do for the dead? We have the Cemetery, which has been considerably enlarged since it was first formed in 1852 or 1853, and the rapid increase of the Cemetery suggests the difficulty of the disposal of the dead in a creditable and satisfactory manner with our increasing population. The old burial ground was opened in the year 1802, and it is one of the peculiarities of this peculiar place, and of the old jurisdictions here, that the old Parish Church appears to have had in ancient times no burial ground belonging to it, a thing that very seldom happens, for the burial ground of the Parish of St. John the Baptist was outside the Minster, which is an extra parochial district. This remained up to 1802, when the burial ground in Cowgate was formed. If you go into it sometime (I am very fond of looking at the tombstones), you will find the oddest peculiarities of language and literature as inscriptions on the tombstones, but I cannot say I have ever found much to admire. You will find a collection of legends which are common all over the country, commencing with