and I counsel the traveller to take note of a
little red figure of Bacchus, which stands on one
of the gable roofs, and the motions of which in
former times gave signals to the smugglers who
used the Orwell for the purpose of introducing
their contraband goods.

Why the Tankard should have changed its
jolly name into such a lugubrious appellation as
that of the Theatre Tavern, I cannot, for the
life of me, imagine; for, by conversation with
barbers, stationers, oyster-vendors, and others,
who are the " brief abstract and chronicles of the
time" (what a maniac was Hamlet to say this
of actors), I learn that at Ipswich the theatre,
far from being a place of public amusement, is
a place to which nobody goes, and that a history
of the successive seasons would show as many
disasters as the annals of the Stuarts. The fact
is, Ipswich is " serious." Nobody goes to the
play; the wares of the booksellers are mostly
confined to pious treatises. No half-closed
shop winks at the passenger to tell him if he
pleases he may purchase on the Sunday afternoon
some one of those innumerable trifles that are
procurable all over London all the week through;
and, lastly, there is no Sunday baking. One of
those earthen dishes, in which a leg of mutton
rides triumphantly over a layer of browned
potatoes, so pleasantly regaling the London
nose after church-time, would at Ipswich be a
sight of terror.

In Tacket-street, near the poor, miserable,
deserted theatre, stands a grand quasi-Gothic
edifice, which would do credit to the most
fanatical worshipper of mediaeval architecture.
Such spires, and such entrances, and all so
new and clean; it is enough to put one's eyes
out, and as for the seven or eight parish
churches, which are all more or less imposing in
their aspect, they are reduced to utter insignificance
by comparison with this gorgeous congregational
chapel, for such, indeed, is the Tacket-
street Temple. The erection of this chapel,
which only took place within the last few years,
was, of course, a cause of universal triumph
among the Independent Dissenters? Nothing of
the sort: it was a cause of schism. Dissenters
of the old school lamented the shabby chapel that
once occupied the same spot, and retreated in
numbers from a building that savoured of the
pomps and vanities of popery, while pietists of a
more genteel kind were mostly pleased with their
new edifice. Thelocal newspapers took up the
subject with immense spirit, and an imaginary
dialogue between the old and new chapel, written by
some Suffolk Lucian, is still remembered as a
masterpiece of sarcasm, as if to confute J.
Wodderspoou's theory of the perishable nature of
written satire.

The townsfolk indulge, however, in Sunday
steam-boat excursions down the Orwell to
Harwich and back again, at a price
ridiculously low. But, this amusement is spiced
by a little squabble: two of the boats belonging
to the Eastern Counties Railway Company,
and two to a company headed by a
gentleman who was once in the employ of the
Eastern Counties party, but who for some reason
or other quitted their service. By the good
people of Ipswich this gentleman is generously
considered (and, for anything I know, with
reason) a martyr. Hence the " Alma boats,"
as they are called, though a trifle dearer than
the "Railway," are supported with enthusiasm,
and when one of these beats a competitor,
the passengers shout with delight
as if their lives and liberties depended on
the contest. At Harwich they may eat roast
and boiled, hot and cold, at pleasure. The
Sabbath restrictions that lie so heavy at one end
of the Orwell, are utterly unknown at the other.
I may observe, by the way, that Harwich
commands a magnificent view of the sea, and
that its breakwater affords an opportunity for
the exploit of walking a wall with a fine
depth of water on each side. Wearers of
crinoline are advised not to attempt it in windy
weather.

Just at the spot where the town of Ipswich
stands, the Orwell is joined by a river called
the Gipping, and this river is not only
interesting because it gives the town its name
—" Ipswich" being a corruption of " Gyppeswich"
—but also because it abounds with fish of
the kind which Cockney disciples of Izaak
Walton (whereof I am one) associate with
pleasant Hertfordshire and its river Lea. Thither,
therefore, did I take my rod and lines, but I had
not watched my float for many minutes, before
three persons of gloomy appearance passed by
me on the pathway where I stood, and with
the assistance of two others on the opposite side,
began the disgusting process of dragging the
river with a huge net. Of course my rod was
at once shut up like an opera-glass at one o'clock
in the morning, and I found a melancholy amusement
in watching the proceedings of the
legalised marauders, who cursed the weeds for not
allowing them free scope. " It is the privilege of
all the freemen of Ipswich to drag the river
Gipping," said the chieftain of the band; "they have
i'ew privileges enough, but they have that. The
weeds will be gone in October, and then we shall
have something like sport." The spoil of the party
on this occasion amounted to about a score or
so of perch, but hideous stories were told of
fish captured by the cartload, and measured
by the bushel;—as appalling to the angler's
;ar as the narrative of a St. Bartholomew
massacre. "What a pity it is," said an honest
tradesman, with a sigh, "that the freemen
of Ipswich have a right to drag the river; this
unhappy privilege does great injury to the town,
which otherwise would offer the finest fishing in
England." I should perhaps observe that the
lamenting tradesman was a dealer in fishing-
tackle.

Of abject poverty there is—at least to a
casual observer—no appearance at Ipswich.
There is a rough, sturdy, well-paid class of factory-
men; but the floating population is agricultural,
and the humbler residents are, for the most
part, small shopkeepers and decent workpeople
nth no look of distress or neglect, or want of