we were often called 'the bairns,' but oftener 'the childer. Is this an ancient plural, or only a corruption of 'children'?

Of these 'bairns' I remember two little incidents, dating, I suppose, not earlier than my own lifetime. Timothy, not my brother James's godfather, having to send a letter to Gainsborough, could not find a sheet of letter paper either at home or anywhere in his neighbourhood. So he wrote on the back of one of Mr. Bish's lottery announcements which then found their way into every house in the kingdom. At another time, having to walk home from Gainsborough in the rain, he purchased an umbrella, the first time in his life. Upon approaching his own hamlet he felt so ashamed of the feminine contrivance that he folded it up, and so walked home with it in an increasing downfall.

Long before this, as I now find from one of my father's letters, he had not himself been so readily recognised for one of the family. In 1804 he wrote from town :

The other night I went to Bowling's. He was out. I asked for Miss Bowling, was desired to walk in, and very soon she came down stairs. How do you do, Rebecca? I hope you are well.' 'Pretty well, thank you, sir. I have not the pleasure of knowing you.' 'Pooh! look again.' 'You are a perfect

stranger to me, sir.' 'My name is Mozley, of Gainsborough.' 'No such thing, sir. I know all the Mozleys of Gainsborough, and you are not one of them.' She walked to the door, and was going to leave me, thinking me some impostor. Now, Rebecca, I really am Henry Mozley. I looked very serious. She then burst into tears. 'Now you look serious, sir, I perceive a faint resemblance to what you used to be.' She seemed much affected. I drank tea with her, stopped near two hours, and promised to call again before I left London.

A SIMPLE REMEDY.

193

At that time my father had only just completed his thirty-first year, and appears to have changed beyond the poor lady's recognition. A long and serious illness in early youth may have altered his complexion. It was something amiss with the blood, which would not flow even at the call of the lancet. My father went to town to consult Dr. Bailey. Upon hearing the case, the doctor said, 'Well, sir, you've come all this way to see me, and no doubt you expect to have to undergo a good deal of medical treatment. But you might have saved yourself this trouble and cost by going to a blacksmith's shop, and drinking a little daily from the small cistern at his side in which he cools his irons. You wouldn't like to drink out of that, for the fellows spit into it; but what I shall give you will be the same thing.' My father followed the prescription, and soon recovered.

My father finally returned from Derby to conduct our migration. His stock and furniture, and his workpeople with their families- more than a hundred head-he had sent on by the canals. The next letter in my exercise-book is addressed to a supposed friend less than a fortnight after our journey. The most noticeable incident in it is thus told :

From Retford we went to Mansfield, where papa saw a barouche, which he ordered to take us to Alfreton. Henry was quite delighted, and he said we should have plenty of room. I thought so too, but I was mistaken, for we were very much crammed in it.

The attraction of course was the four horses.

A week after, still in that memorable month of August, I describe our new house and All Saints'

VOL. I.

Church, with the Cavendish monuments, adding an invidious comparison with the four other churches— then the only four others.

In this same letter I mention that all the elders of the family had gone to the races, six days after our arrival in the town. I lament in the letter that not having gone myself I cannot describe them. It must have been the next year, 1816, that my father took me to the races. He secured with both hands a good place at the rope, and I peeped through the first rank as well as I could. A fellow ran from the opposite side and asked my father to take one hand off the rope that he might make his way through. My father complied. The fellow immediately sprang up between my father and the rope, thrusting him thereby into the hinder rank. My father exclaimed, 'Do you call that honourable?' The fellow replied, 'All's fair on a racecourse.' I was then in my tenth year, and I have never gone to a race since.

In the next month after our arrival at Derby, having just completed my ninth year, I might consider that I had had experiences, and that I could measure decline and foresee fall. Under date September 27, 1815, I find :

Your friends at Gainsborough will, I hope, escape the fate that seems to attend many of its inhabitants, for surely never place went so rapidly to decay. You did well in leaving it, and if you like London as well as I do Derby you will have no reason to complain of the choice you have made.

While quite ready to appreciate the energy, the prosperity, and the 'go' of Derby in the comparison with the decaying river port we had left I was not so

LOSSES AND GAINS.

195

The common

ready to bear with the inevitable cost. people we met in the streets did not make way for us, or give us the wall. They stood in groups, filling up the pavement, and compelling us to take to the gutter. This appeared to me to mark low breeding, indeed inferior civilisation. I did not remember that everybody knew our faces at Gainsborough, and nobody at Derby. Nor did I consider that there were no manufactures at Gainsborough, and consequently no reason why at certain hours the population should lounge about the pavements, and there discuss the news of the day with their friends. For some years I remained under a fixed impression that the people of Derby, if not intentionally insolent, were exceedingly rude.

The losses and gains of the removal were both great, but I find by these letters as well as by my recollections that the gains rapidly preponderated. We had no longer the solemn loneliness of the dull and remote town, with its Trent, its 'eagre,' its Old Hall— John of Gaunt's, as we always called it-its Saxon and Danish traditions. But Derby introduced us to a tributary river, matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior, to mountain scenery, to Matlock and Dovedale, either of them the rival of Tempe, to Roman antiquities, and to the very street where within living memory the monarchy of the Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts had made its last show, and, at the roll of the drum, had retreated northward, never to return again.

The period of seventy years is generally imagined as likely to tax the memory, and to destroy anything like a personal link between one age and another.

The Captivity of Judah was for seventy years. All the New Testament, except the writings ascribed to the Beloved Apostle, is contained within that period. The Norman and Lancaster dynasties each lasted about seventy years. It was not so much from the accession of Charles I. to the Great Revolution. When we came to Derby in 1815 it was just seventy 1745, and there were old Our family had sojourned

years after the rebellion of people who talked about it. at Gainsborough for rather more than seventy years; and it is now exactly that period since our migration, which I remember well, and of which I have now before me a record in my own hand, in a series of letters written before and after the journey.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SOME EMPLOYÉS.

IN the migration I have described, which indeed I described in an imaginary letter a few days after the event, were not a few who had been in the service of my father from their boyhood, and who lived and died in it. Several had been apprenticed to my father, and in that capacity they now came to Derby, though I seem to remember that it was distinctly offered to them that, if they did not like the move, they might have their indentures cancelled. This would be just at the time their services were becoming valuable; but they preferred to remain with my father. All of