ngst
its supporters; I see him now, with his choleric face, his full fat
figure, his black knee-breeches and silk stockings, his gold-headed cane.
He was an author, a learned man, as well as a Norwich merchant, the very
Aristarchus of Dissent--a kind-hearted, hospitable man withal, if my
boyish experience may be relied on. One Sunday there came to preach in
the Old Meeting a young man named Halley from London, who lived to be
honoured as few of our Dissenting D.D.'s have been. He was young, and he
felt nervous as he looked from the pulpit on the austere critic in his
great square pew just beneath. Well, thought the young preacher, a
sermon on keeping the Sabbath will be safe, and he selected that for his
morning discourse. The service over, up comes the grand old man. 'The
next time, young man, you preach, preach on something you understand;'
and, having said so, he bought a pennyworth of apples of a woman in the
street, leaving the young man to digest his remarks as best he could.
Again the service was to be carried on. The young man was in the pulpit,
the grand old man below. There was singing and prayer, but no sermon,
the young man having bolted after opening the service. I like better the
picture of Norwich I get in Sir James Mackintosh's Life, where Basil
Montague tells us how he and Mackintosh, when travelling the Norfolk
circuit, always hastened to Norwich to spend their evenings in the circle
of which Mrs. Taylor was the attraction and the centre. The wife of a
Norwich tradesman, we see her sitting sewing and talking in the midst of
her family, the companion of philosophers, who compared her to Lucy
Hutchinson, and a model wife. Far away in India Sir James writes to her:
'I know the value of your letters. They rouse my mind on subjects which
interest us in common--friends, children, literature, and life. Their
moral tone cheers and braces me. I ought to be made permanently happy by
contemplating a mind like yours; which seems more exclusively to derive
its gratifications from its duties than almost any other.' It was in the
Norwich Octagon that these Taylors worshipped. Their Unitarianism seemed
to have affected them more favourably than it did Harriet Martineau,
whose family also attended there. I remember Edward Taylor, who was the
Gresham Professor of Music. But theologically, I presume, the palm of
excellence in connection with the Octagon is to be awarded to Dr. Taylor,
the great Hebrew scho