37 
entering upon his clerical duties to abstain from four things, 
i.e., Sporting, Farming, Politics, and Magisterial Business. His 
earliest recollection, he tells us, dates from the year 1806, 
when, between five and six year old, he remembers the funeral 
of Lord Nelson; a circumstance then occurring calculated 
to impress itself upon the minds of children. This was the 
picture of the funeral car being brought up into the nursery 
and shown to his brothers and sisters. One of the latter, the 
youngest of the family, has recently deceased in Bath, a few 
weeks only prior to her brother’s death. 
At the age of nine years he was sent to a private school kept by 
the Rev. Wm. Carmalt, at Putney, from Connaught Place, where 
his father then lived. As some idea of the changes taken place 
since that time he describes Connaught Place as a street consisting 
of newly built houses, some still unfinished, and as the last street 
in London W. of the Edgeware Road, all to the W. being green 
fields! Tyburn Turnpike was then standing and nightingales 
were heard in the trees and thick underwood on the Hyde Park 
side of a high brick wall separating the Uxbridge Road (as then 
called) from the Park. French seems to have been his speciality 
at school, rather than Latin and Greek, and at the end of his first 
year he gained a prize given to the boy who passed his examina- 
tion best in that language, a small pucket edition of “ Robinson 
Crusoe,” now in his library. The boy was father of the man ; 
naturally of a still and quiet disposition he preferred to be left to 
himself rather than join with his schoolfellows in their games. 
This he attributes to his weakly constitution showing itself in 
frequent sick headaches that interfered much in after days with 
his parochial work, and troubled him till past middle life. 
In a book kindly lent me by Mrs. Blomefield containing 
«“ Thonghts and Notes” in MS. on many interesting subjects, the 
following occurs with reference to his health. 
“JT am unfortunately subject to severe headaches which for a time 
incapacitate me from doing anything. But when they are fairly over 
