titudes, was seen in the humble
Dissenting meeting-house at Beccles shedding abundant and unaffected
tears at the plain and faithful exhibition of religious truth. Mr.
Sloper's preaching was as powerfully recommended to her by the delightful
illustration of Christian principles exhibited in his private character,
as by the intrinsic importance of those principles, and the simple
gravity and penetrating earnestness with which they were announced from
his lips. He afterwards procured for her, at her request, a copy of
Scott's admirable "Commentary on the Bible," which he accompanied with a
letter, warmly urging upon her attention the great realities her
profession had so manifest a tendency to exclude from her contemplations.
Mrs. Siddons,' again I quote Mr. Rix, 'more than once expressed her
gratitude for the interest Mr. Sloper had evinced in her eternal welfare;
she thanked him in writing for the advice he had given her, adding an
emphatic wish that God might enable her to follow it--a wish which her
pious and amiable correspondent echoed with all the fervour of his heart.
She returned into the glare of popularity, but a hope may easily be
indulged that the pressure of subsequent relative afflictions and of old
age were not permitted to come upon her unaccompanied by the impressions
and consolations of true religion. Her elegant biographer, Mr. Campbell,
draws a veil over the state of her mind during her last hours, which it
would be deeply interesting to penetrate. Would she not then, if reason
were undimmed, reflect upon the faithful counsel she received with
Scott's Bible as being of infinitely greater value than the applause of
myriads or the fame of ages?'

Beccles, where this good Mr. Sloper lived, and where the writer of this
extract was a respectable solicitor--I believe the firm of Rix and Son
still exists--was a small market town about eight miles from Wrentham,
inland. At that time it ranked as the third town in Suffolk. Towards
the west it is skirted by a cliff, once washed by the estuary which
separated the eastern portions of Norfolk and Suffolk. There is every
reason to believe that ages back the mouth of the Yare was an estuary or
arm of the sea, and extended with considerable magnitude for many miles
up the country. The herring fishery was thus a principal source of
emolument to the inhabitants, and in the time of the Conqueror the fee
farm rent of the manor of Beccles to the King was 60,000 her