d in his honour by Lady Clayton in
Marden Park, Surrey. It is to be hoped that the memorial remains,
though, alas! the noble mansion at one time inhabited by Wilberforce, and
where the great philanthropist's celebrated son, the Bishop of Oxford was
born, and where I have spent more than one pleasant day when Sir John
Puleston lived there, has been since burnt down.

CHAPTER IX.
AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN.

Woodbridge and the country round--Bernard Barton--Dr. Lankester--An old
Noncon.

The traveller as he leaves the English coast for Antwerp or Rotterdam or
the northern ports of Germany, may remember that the last glimpse of his
native land is the light from Orford Ness, which is a guiding star to the
mariner as he ploughs his weary way along the deep. Of that part of
Suffolk little is known to the community at large. When I was a boy it
was looked upon as an _ultima Thule_, where the people were in a
primitive state of civilization; where shops and towns and newspapers and
good roads were unknown; where traditions of smuggling yet remained. Few
ever went into that region, and those who did, when they returned, did
not bring back with them encouraging reports. Barren sandy moors, along
which the bitter east wind perpetually blew, fatal alike to vegetation
and human life, were the chief characteristics of a district the natives
of which were not rich, at any rate as regards this world's goods.
Orford, like Dunwich, was once a place of some importance. 'A large and
populous town with a castle of reddish stone,' writes Camden, but in his
time a victim of the sea's ingratitude; 'which withdraws itself little by
little, and begins to envy it the advantages of a harbour.' In the time
of Henry I., writes Ralph de Coggeshall, when Bartholomew de Glanville
was Governor of its castle, some fishermen there caught a wild man in
their nets. 'All the parts of his body resembled those of a man. He had
hair on his head, a long-peaked beard, and about the breast was exceeding
hairy and rough. But at length he made his escape into the sea, and was
never seen more,' which was a pity, as undoubtedly he was the 'missing
link.' Besides, as Camden remarks, the fact was a confirmation of what
the common people of his time remarked. 'Whatever is produced in any
part of nature is in the sea,' and shows 'that not all is fabulous what
Pliny has written about the Triton on the coasts of Portugal, and the sea
man in the Straits of