69 
the ‘‘ Penny Magazine,” the first numbers of which I remember 
seeing at the house of a relation, but it was a penny too much 
for our exchequer. Then there was the Mechanics’ Library, 
started in 1834, and from that time books began to come within 
our reach, more even than there was time for the reading. 
With the passing of the Reform Bill did not at once come the 
cheap newspaper, but 1832 was the beginning of the influx of 
that cheap periodical and serial literature, which began, as far as 
I remember, with the ‘“‘ Penny Magazine,” soon followed by 
‘¢ Chambers’ Journal,’’ and which has now become a vast tide, 
bearing upon its mighty waters, with a good deal of “ sound and 
foam,” the master pieces of genius and philosophy. About fifty 
years ago ‘‘Chambers’ Cyclopedia of English Literature’ was 
first issued, and I managed to find sevenpence a month for the 
purchase of that, and this was a vast advance upon “ Enfield’s 
Speaker.’’ It was soon revealed to me that there were mighty 
voices of the present as well as of the past. But before even 
this I had bought a small edition of ‘‘ Childe Harold”’ at a book- 
sale. That was in 1838. T. B. Spencer lent me, or my father, 
a very small copy of “‘ Don Juan :” a strange book to be presented 
by a Methodist preacher to a Quaker, or a Quaker’s son. Then 
came glimpses of Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, 
Charles Lamb, and I never rested till I had possessed myself of 
books that were a sort of revelation which opened to me the 
divine mysteries of nature and the soul. 
Professor Tyndall records that one day he happened to pick up 
a small copy of “ Nature,’’ an essay by Emerson, on an old 
book-stall, and that it had been to him as an inspiration; that 
he read it with delight, aud had never ceased to read it. About 
the same time I picked up the same little shilling book at an old 
book-stall in the old market place, and since then Emerson has 
been to me all that he has been to Tyndall, a constant com- 
panion and friend. 
But I am anticipating. I must not forget that this is a village 
tale. In the old Blucher Street times, the evenings were spent 
often in telling old ghost and witch stories round the fire of 
winter nights, old and young together, and old and young 
believed in them with a faith as implicit as Tasso believed “ the 
magic wonders that he sung.” ‘The air was thick with supersti- 
tion. Witches were not things of the past but of the present. 
It was as common for people to be ‘“ witched” as it was for 
children to have the measles. Not only in Pendle Forest, but in 
every village there was the wizard and the witch, the old man or 
woman with an ‘evil eye.’”’ Old men and women were known 
to have sold their souls to the evil one. Few people doubted 
then the truth of the old stories, and those who did found a 
half-credulous, fearful pleasure in hearing or telling the weird 
