ase and
respectability on a pension of "eighteenpence a day;" and well did his
fellow-townsmen act when, to increase that ease and respectability, and
with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they
made him clerk and precentor--the man of the tall form and of the audible
voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife. Well, peace
to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of
papists, as became a dignified and high-church clerk; if thou art in thy
grave the better for thee; thou wert fitted to adorn a bygone time, when
loyalty was in vogue, and smiling content lay like a sunbeam upon the
land, but thou wouldst be sadly out of place in these days of cold
philosophical latitudinarian doctrine, universal tolerism, and
half-concealed rebellion--rare times, no doubt, for papists and
dissenters, but which would assuredly have broken the heart of the loyal
soldier of George the Third, and the dignified high-church clerk of
pretty D---.

We passed many months at this place: nothing, however, occurred requiring
any particular notice, relating to myself, beyond what I have already
stated, and I am not writing the history of others. At length my father
was recalled to his regiment, which at that time was stationed at a place
called Norman Cross, in Lincolnshire, or rather Huntingdonshire, at some
distance from the old town of Peterborough. For this place he departed,
leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days. Our journey was a
singular one. On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country,
which, owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen, was
completely submerged. At a large town we got on board a kind of
passage-boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and
those were not the days of steam-vessels; it was in a treck-schuyt, and
was drawn by horses.

Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which highly
surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes
described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom. The
country was, as I have already said, submerged--entirely drowned--no land
was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood, whilst
farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated; the horses which drew us
were up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind pools and "greedy
depths," were not unfrequently swimming, in which case the boys or
urchins