a 'God-forsaken' region; and a still stronger contrast to the industrious, speculative, half foreign, Isle of Axholme.

This favoured region, this man-made paradise, westward of us, on which we put our foot on crossing the bridge, is the Parliamentary borough of East Retford, or the hundred of Bassetlaw. Few localities in this century have been favoured with so many hard names. It is an anomaly, a monstrosity, a diluted rotten borough, a hybrid between country and town, a mere frog that has swollen itself in rivalry to the ox. In a word, it is a defiance of all principle. This, however, is the truest and exactest description that could be given of our whole electoral system.

It was in one of the first years of the century that my father bought the house in which I and my brother James were born. He often mentioned the simple and cheap process of transfer. The house was held by copyhold under the manor of Gainsborough. He went with the vendor to an office, where the purchaser's name was substituted for the vendor's in a book, and a shilling given to the clerk, when they walked away.

All my childhood was darkened by stories of the Press-gang. The king's ships hovered about the coasts, off the most frequented ports, boarded merchant-ships returning sometimes from long voyages, and carried off young fellows as they were on the point of revisiting their homes, often never to be heard of again. That was the fate of several of my own relatives by my mother's side, and it has often led me to ask what England will do in the event of

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a great naval war, for I cannot suppose the system of pressing will be tolerated.

One of the numbers of the 'Country Spectator' is the touching narrative of a thriving fisherman intercepted by a frigate on his return from a cruise, and then, after a service which promised promotion and prize-money, cut in two by a cannon-ball in one of Rodney's actions. His three sons were taken up by the Marine Society, which made two of them sailors. But there was no provision for the widow, and she soon died in a workhouse.

Our servants had many stories of the press-gang, some very pitiable. By strange caprices of memory I associate them with particular spots of my native town, and never think of them without a shudder. However, the navy got hold of apprentices as well, though I believe they were legally exempt. Almost everybody about me was a volunteeer, and, I have little doubt, ready for action, and likely to do good service. It was, however, rather as trophies and relics, than for any chance of active service, that several of my father's work-people brought with them to Derby long boarding-pikes, some of which I remember being told had been actually used in the West Indies.

Gainsborough was the most foreign-looking town I have known in England. The red fluted tiles, the yellow ochre doorsteps, the green outside shutters, the frequent appearance of the jawbones of whales utilised for garden gateposts, and, above all, the masts and spars suddenly appearing high over corn-fields, took one quite out of everyday England.

I cannot, however, be blind to the fact that it requires any one to have been born and bred in the town to feel a positive enthusiasm for it. I met some years ago on the railway the daughter of a clergyman whose living lay near the town. She had had a troubled time, and was now earning her own bread by making picturesque water-colour drawings of seats, parks, and pleasure-grounds. It chanced to come out that I was a native of Gainsborough, when she exclaimed with unexpected animation, 'I pity you.' I replied that I did not feel I had any claim to her pity. From time to time I have heard of people who had received every possible kindness from the town taking the earliest opportunity to get out of it, though they could give no reason for their apparent ingratitude.

Many of the names there in my time were German, or Dutch, or from the Isle of Axholme, so often mentioned in these pages. This was a fertile plain, surrounded and protected by morasses, till an adventurous Dutch engineer obtained Charles I.'s consent to drain and reclaim them, which he did most successfully. Mr. Rudsdell, one of my own godfathers, was of foreign extraction, and one of the four trustees of the Presbyterian (Unitarian) MeetingHouse. He and his wife dined with us on Christmas Day, 1814, and I stood by when my father communicated to him, first of his townsmen, his intention to move to Derby. The poor gentleman could hardly believe it. We often heard of him and his folks. His pleasant, good-looking daughter paid us a visit at Derby, and married in due time the young minister

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of her Gainsborough congregation. His eldest son was knighted for services rendered to the Foreign Office in the Mediterranean.

The father was still living at a great age in 1842, when my father took me a round of the old places. Mr. Rudsdell had moved to the pretty residential village of Morton, a mile down the Trent. We went there. Immediately after passing a bend of the road and coming in sight of the village street, we saw afar off a brilliant object in the sunshine. My father at once recognised it. The Rudsdells had brought from their continental home an immense brass door-knocker, which they attached to their Gainsborough door, and which even there attracted attention. The old gentleman was in a genteel cottage now, but the knocker was there. It was a wasted visit, and we came away disappointed. He could not be persuaded that my father was not my grandfather, who had been more nearly his own contemporary.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

TWO MISHAPS.

I

My eldest brother used frequently to aver that he distinctly remembered the arrival of a large Cheshire cheese in a wheelbarrow the day of his birth. cannot pretend to vie with him in my recollections, but I used to hear as a fact that after long suffering my mother had a tooth extracted the day before my

birth. I was so diminutive, and weakly, that upon our being initiated by Miss Holt in the severities of the Spartan system, I was told it was fortunate I had not been born in those days, as I should have been at once condemned as physically incapable of useful citizenship. Bad as this beginning was, I helped to make it worse.

In 1810, within the Jubilee year, the wall separating our garden from the Garfits' was in the mason's hands. He had left his ladder standing and gone off to his afternoon meal. My brother John, just five, mounted the ladder to save some ripe currants on a tree nailed to the wall. I followed suit on the ground below, stooping as I remember, and being then three and three quarters. My brother chanced to loosen a brick-the only wicked thing he did in his life-and it fell cornerwise into the crown of my skull, which had happily not quite lost its cartilaginous consistency. The result was a deep indentation, which remains to this day. I was not stunned or much hurt. I remember walking to a back kitchen to have my head washed at the pump. My parents, however, were much frightened. I had erysipelas, I believe also ophthalmia, and I was taken to Cleathorpes. Among other incidents of my journey I remember our stopping at Brocklesby to see the new Yarborough mausoleum, when, at my desire, I was lifted up to see whatever was to be seen in the lower windows.

I was not apparently the worse for the accident, for next year, and for two years, I went daily 'down town' to a school for young ladies-my brother John going to the male department. The accident made