Some of our East Coast Towns by J. Ewing Ritchie

Author:J. Ewing Ritchie [Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-01-03T23:00:00+00:00

VI.

LIVING NORWICH.

We have heard a good deal of Norwich. When the summer comes, some enterprising journalist manages to find his way there, and if he has a copy of Evelyn, waxes eloquent over its gardens, and market-place, and ancient castle, and its memories of Sir Thomas Browne. I write of the Norwich of to-day—of living Norwich—a city with a population of more than a hundred thousand—that has renewed its youth—that is marching on like John Brown’s soul; a Norwich that was, as I first remember it, a seat of Parliamentary and political corruption, of vice and ignorance, of apathy and sloth. It is a grand old city, none grander anywhere in England. It is a place to me of pleasant memories, and the stranger within its gates must admit the charm of its grey towers and churches, its cathedral, its well-wooded suburbs extending over a wide range of hills. In that respect some claim for Norwich that it resembles Jerusalem. From all I can make out I should be inclined to give Norwich the preference. It has fewer Jews and not so many fleas.

And first let me speak of living Norwich religiously. One of our wise kings said that the spire of Harrow was an outward and visible sign of the Church. Norwich rejoices in many such signs. Perhaps one of the most prominent at this time is the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at the end of St. Giles’s, which has been nine years in building, which is being erected regardless of expense, and which is far from completed yet. I heard Cardinal Manning, who was the most complete exemplification of the union of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove I ever saw, in one of his sermons compare the Church of Rome to a lamb in the midst of wolves. At Norwich, as in most parts of England, the lamb is by no means a little one, and it may be in time it will develop into a ram, and a ram can do not a little mischief. What sign of life does the State Church give? Norwich is full of parsons; are any of them men of note? It had one it borrowed from dissent, Dr. Cunningham Geikie, but he could not stand the climate, and now lives at Bournemouth. What sign of life, again I ask, does the Norwich State Church exhibit? Alas, the reply is not satisfactory. With the exception of its new Dean, there is no clergyman of note among them. Dean Lefroy is able, earnest, active, a worker in many ways, social as well as religious, and on Sunday evening fills the nave of the Cathedral, where he conducts a service minus the Church prayers, and plus Moody and Sankey hymns. He is Evangelical, and is making that influence felt. He is an Irishman, and as a matter of coarse fervid and eloquent. When he came to Norwich, I am told, he expressed his hope that he should soon empty some of its many chapels.

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