has
been able at present to plant a single dwelling. When Ipswich has
climbed up its surrounding hills, and taken up all the building sites at
present in the market, it will be a goodly and gallant town, almost
fitted to invite the temporary residence of holiday-making Londoners who
are fond of the water. At all times it is a pretty sail to Harwich and
thence to Felixstowe, that quiet watering-place, a seaside residence that
has still a pleasant flavour of rusticity about it, with a fine crisp
sea-sand floor for a promenade.

When I was a boy Ipswich was resorted to by Londoners in the summer-time.
As an illustration, I give the case of Mr. Ewen, one of the deacons of
the Weigh House Chapel, when the Rev. John Clayton was the pastor. In
his memories of the Clayton family, the Rev. Dr. Aveling writes of Mr.
Ewen, that 'he was so sensitively conscientious in the discharge of his
official duties at the Weigh House, that he was never absent from town on
the days when the Lord's Supper was administered, and when he was
expected to assist in the administration of the elements. His London
residence was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but having a house and property in
the town of Ipswich, he passed his summer months there. Yet so intent
was he upon duly filling his place in the sanctuary of God, that he
regularly travelled by post-chaise once in every month, and returned in
the same manner, that he might be present, together with his pastor and
the brethren, at the table of the Lord. The length and the expense of
the journey (and travelling was not then what it is now) did not deter
him from what he at least deemed to be a matter of Christian obligation.'
Dr. Aveling is quite right when he tells us travelling is not what it
was. It took almost a day to go from Ipswich to London when I was a boy,
and now the journey is done by means of the Great Eastern Railway in
about an hour and a half. It seems marvellous to one who, like myself,
remembers well the past, to leave Liverpool Street at 5.0 p.m. precisely,
and to find one's self landed safe and well in Ipswich soon after
half-past six. The present generation can have no conception of
travelling in England in the olden time.

There were some wonderful old Radicals in Ipswich, though it was, and is,
the county town of the most landlord-ridden district in England. Some of
them got the great Dan O'Connell to pay the town a visit, and some of
them nobly stood by old John Childs