MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



/-seven. 



age of ninety-three and the other at ninety-seven, 

 each with a clear and vigorous mind to nearly the 

 very end of her life. I have hardly any contempor- 

 ary friends left who could aid in recalling the circum- 

 stances of my childhood and boyhood. With rare 

 exceptions, " All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 



I was born on February 16, 1822, at the Larches, 

 near Sparkbrook, Birmingham, with which town my 

 father Samuel Tertius, my grandfather Samuel John, 

 and my great-grandfather Samuel Galton, were all 

 closely connected. Different members of the family 

 had resided or were resident at various points beyond 

 the circumference of the town, in houses then amidst 

 green fields, but now overspread beyond recognition 

 by its hideous outskirts. 



My grandfather's place was at Duddeston, then 

 commonly written " Dudson." Its gardens had been 

 charmingly laid out by my great-grandfather and 

 improved by my grandfather. The house, which was 

 once a centre of refined entertainment, gradually 

 lost its charm of isolation ; later on, it wholly ceased 

 to be attractive as a residence. It was then leased 

 by my father to the proprietor of a lunatic asylum, 

 because, as he remarked, no one in his senses would 

 live in it. It is now turned into St. Anne's School, 

 with its porticoes and other outer adornments shorn 

 off, and with its once beautiful gardens changed into 

 the sites of railway sidings and gasworks. I re- 

 member it distinctly in its beauty in the year 1830, 

 which was two years before my grandfather's death. 



The Larches, where I was born, had some 

 three acres of garden and field attached to it, with 

 other fields beyond ; it was a paradise for my child- 



