re trained, at
any rate, two of our most distinguished Nonconformists, Edward Miall and
Thomas Binney. I am sorry Coward College ceased to exist as a separate
institution. We were all very happy there. We had a splendid old
library at our disposal, where we could learn somewhat of

Many an old philosophy
On Argus heights divinely sung;

and for many a day afterwards we dined together once a year. I think our
last dinner was at Mr. Binney's, who was at his best when he gathered
around him his juniors, like himself, the subjects of old Coward's
bounty. It was curious to me to find how little appreciated was the good
merchant's grand bequest. I often found that in many quarters,
especially among the country churches, the education given to the young
men at Coward's was regarded as a disqualification. It was suspected
that it impeded their religious career, that they were not so sound as
good young men who did not enjoy these advantages, that at other colleges
the preachers were better because not so learned, more devotedly pious
because more ignorant. It was held then that a student might be
over-educated, and the more he knew the more his religious zeal
diminished. In these days the feeling has ceased to exist, and the
churches are proud of the men who consecrate to the service of their Lord
all their cultivated powers of body and mind. The Christian Church has
ceased to fear the bugbear of a learned ministry. One can quite
understand, however, how that feeling came into existence. The success
of the early Methodists had led many to feel how little need there was
for culture when the torpor of the worldly and the poor was to be broken
up. The Methodists were of the people and spoke to them in a language
they could understand. Learning, criticism, doubt--what were they in the
opinion of the pious of those days but snares to be avoided, perils to be
shunned? For good or bad, we have outgrown that.

CHAPTER VII.
LONDON LONG AGO.

In due time--that is when I was about sixteen years old--I made my way to
London, a city as deadly, as dreary as can well be conceived, in spite of
the wonderful Cathedral of St. Paul's, as much a thing of beauty as it
ever was, and the Monument, one of the first things the country cousin
was taken to see, with the exception of Madame Tussaud's, then in Baker
Street. In the streets where the shops were the houses were mean and
low, of dirty red brick, of which th