Personal Recollections | Page 5

at his own fireside, I don't see how
the little blind girl, whose face was ever turned up towards the unseen
speaker, and whose mind opened to every passing remark, could avoid
becoming a thinker, a reasoner, a tory, and a patriot. Sometimes a tough
disputant crossed our threshold; one of these was Dr. Parr, and brilliant
were the flashes resulting from such occasional collision with
antagonists of that calibre. I am often charged with the offence of being
too political in my writings: the fact is, I write as I think and feel; and
what else can you expect from a child reared in such a nursery?
But another consequence of this temporary visitation was an increased
passion for music. The severe remedies used for my blindness
frequently laid me on the sofa for days together, and then my fond
father would bring home with him, after the afternoon service of the
cathedral, of which he was also a canon, a party of the young choristers.
My godfather would seat himself at the harpsichord; the boys, led by
my father, performed the vocal parts; and such feasts of sacred music
were served up to me, that I have breathed to my brother in an ecstatic
whisper the confession, "I don't want to see; I like music better than
seeing."
That brother I have not before named; but that only brother was a
second self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was
beautiful to a prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from

any predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest
degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious
marvels of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever
bestowed an after- thought on any thing therein contained. The
brightest, the sweetest, the most sparkling creature that ever lived, he
was all joy, all love. I do not remember to have seen him for one
moment out of temper or out of spirits for the first sixteen years of his
life; and he was to me what the natural sun is to the system. We were
never separated; our studies, our plays, our walks, our plans, our hearts
were always one. That holy band which the Lord has woven, that
inestimable blessing of fraternal love and confidence, was never broken,
never loosened between us, from the cradle to his grave; and God
forbid that I should say or think that the grave has broken it. If I have
not from the outset included that precious brother in my sketch, it was
because I should almost as soon have deemed it necessary to include by
name my own head or my own heart. He too was musical, and sang
sweetly, and I cannot look back on my childhood without confessing
that its cup ran over with the profusion of delights that my God poured
into it.
About this time, when my sight, after a few months' privation, was
fully restored, I first imbibed the strength of Protestantism as deeply as
it can be imbibed apart from spiritual understanding, Norwich was
infamously conspicuous in persecuting unto death the saints of the
Most High, under the sanguinary despotism of popish Mary; and the
spot where they suffered, called the Lollard's pit, lies just outside the
town, over Bishop's bridge, having a circular excavation against the
side of Moushold-hill. This, at least to within a year or two ago, was
kept distinct, an opening by the road-side. My father often took us to
walk in that direction, and pointed out the pit, and told us that there
Mary burnt good people alive for refusing to worship wooden images. I
was horror-stricken, and asked many questions, to which he did not
always reply so fully as I wished; and one day, having to go out while I
was inquiring, he said, "I don't think you can read a word of this book,
but you may look at the pictures: it is all about the martyrs." So saying,
he placed on a chair the old folio of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, in
venerable black-letter, and left me to examine it.
Hours passed and still found me bending over, or rather leaning against

that magic book. I could not, it is true, decipher the black-letter, but I
found some explanations in Roman type, and devoured them; while
every wood-cut was examined with aching eyes and a palpitating heart.
Assuredly I took in more of the spirit of John Foxe, even by that
imperfect mode of acquaintance, than many do by reading his book
through; and when my father next found me at what became my darling
study, I looked up at him with burning cheeks and asked, "Papa, may I
be a martyr?"
"What