the rest of England and Scotland, whom the parish church had not
driven into dissent or secession. But he could not help knowing the
Prayer-Book, and especially its psalms and lessons, and he was duly
confirmed. The family training, too, was exceptionally scriptural,
though not evangelical. "I had many stirrings of mind occasioned by
being often obliged to read books of a religious character; and,
having been accustomed from my infancy to read the Scriptures, I had
a considerable acquaintance therewith, especially with the
historical parts." The first result was to make him despise
dissenters. But, undoubtedly, this eldest son of the schoolmaster
and the clerk of the parish had at fourteen received an education
from parents, nature, and books which, with his habits of
observation, love of reading, and perseverance, made him better
instructed than most boys of fourteen far above the peasant class to
which he belonged.

Buried in this obscure village in the dullest period of the dullest
of all centuries, the boy had no better prospect before him than
that of a weaver or labourer, or possibly a schoolmaster like one of
his uncles in the neighbouring town of Towcester. When twelve years
of age, with his uncle there, he might have formed one of the crowd
which listened to John Wesley, who, in 1773 and then aged seventy,
visited the prosperous posting town. Paulerspury could indeed boast
of one son, Edward Bernard, D.D., who, two centuries before, had
made for himself a name in Oxford, where he was Savilian Professor
of Astronomy. But Carey was not a Scotsman, and therefore the
university was not for such as he. Like his school-fellows, he
seemed born to the English labourer's fate of five shillings a week,
and the poorhouse in sickness and old age. From this, in the first
instance, he was saved by a disease which affected his face and