question but that they would be brought up in the faith of their
parents, and that a line of Catholic monarchs would occupy the throne of
England. To the Church, as represented by my mother, and to
Nonconformity, in the person of my father, this was an equally
intolerable prospect.

I have been telling you all this old history because you will find, as
I go on, that this state of things caused in the end such a seething and
fermenting throughout the nation that even I, a simple village lad, was
dragged into the whirl and had my whole life influenced by it. If I did
not make the course of events clear to you, you would hardly understand
the influences which had such an effect upon my whole history. In the
meantime, I wish you to remember that when King James II. ascended the
throne he did so amid a sullen silence on the part of a large class of
his subjects, and that both my father and my mother were among those who
were zealous for a Protestant succession.

My childhood was, as I have already said, a gloomy one. Now and again
when there chanced to be a fair at Portsdown Hill, or when a passing
raree showman set up his booth in the village, my dear mother would slip
a penny or two from her housekeeping money into my hand, and with a
warning finger upon her lip would send me off to see the sights.
These treats were, however, rare events, and made such a mark upon my
mind, that when I was sixteen years of age I could have checked off upon
my fingers all that I had ever seen. There was William Harker the
strong man, who lifted Farmer Alcott's roan mare; and there was Tubby
Lawson the dwarf, who could fit himself into a pickle jar--these two I
well remember from the wonder wherewith they struck my youthful soul.
Then there was the show of the playing dolls, and that of the enchanted
island and Mynheer Munster from the Lowlands, who could turn himself