time, I am more
inclined to admire the activity of Wilberforce, of whom we read, when
elected for Hull, 'When the procession reached his mother's house, he
sprang from the chair, and, presenting himself with surprising quickness
at a projecting window--it was that of the nursery in which his childhood
had been passed--he addressed the populace with such complete effect that
he was afterwards able to decide the election of its successor.' At
Norwich the Hon. Mr. Scarlett did well in not attempting a similar
display of agility. Perhaps, however, it is quite as well that we have
got rid of the chairing and the humour--Heaven help us!--to which it gave
rise on the part of an English mob.

There was a delightful flavour of antiquity about the Norwich of that
day--its old fusty chapels and churches, its old bridges and narrow
streets. All the people with whom I came into contact on that festival
seemed to me well stricken in years. It was not so very long since, old
Hornbutton Jack had been seen threading his way along its ancient
streets. With a countenance much resembling the portraits of Erasmus,
with gray hair hanging about his shoulders, with his hat drawn over his
eyes and his hands behind him, as if in deep meditation; John Fransham,
the Norwich metaphysician and mathematician, might well excite the
curiosity of the casual observer, especially when I add that he was
bandy-legged, that he was short of stature, that he wore a green jacket,
a broad hat, large shoes, and short worsted stockings. A Norwich weaver
had helped to make Fransham a philosopher. Wright said Fransham could
discourse well on the nature and fitness of things. He possessed a
purely philosophical spirit and a soul well purified from vulgar errors.
Fransham made himself famous in his day. There is every reason to
believe that he had been for some time tutor to Mr. Windham. He is once
recorded to have spent a day with Dr. Parr. Many of his pupils became
professional men; with one of them, Dr. Leeds, the reader of Foote's
comedies, if such a one exists, may be acquainted. The tutor and his
pupil, as Johnny Macpherson and Dr. Last, were actually exhibited on the
stage. But to return to Norwich antiquities. I have a dim memory of
some old place where the Dutch and Huguenot refugees were permitted to
meet for worship, and even now I can recognise there the possibility of
another Sir Thomas Browne--unless the Norwich of my boyhood has undergone