close upon nineteen centuries ago! Delightful is the situation of Uriconium on its gentle rise, with far views of the country around, and the Severn winding just below. It seems strange that, whilst the sites of so many Roman towns are the sites of English towns to-day, Uriconium so favoured in position should be left desolate--given over to the winds of heaven and the birds of the air. Leaving the ruined city to its sole inhabitants, the birds and perchance the rabbits, we had a fine view of the isolated hill of the Wrekin, from the top of which flamed forth the beacon that told the great Armada was in sight. Then ... streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin's crest of light. "To friends all round the Wrekin" is a famous Shropshire toast, and all good Salopians know how that hill came into being: how that the Devil, once upon a time, as the fairy story-books have it, had a grudge against Shrewsbury, and was carrying a great load of earth and rocks on his back, intending to dump it down in the bed of the Severn, and so block the flow of the river and drown all the Shrewsbury people; but even the Devil grew weary of his heavy load, and threw it down on the spot where the Wrekin now stands, declaring he would carry it no longer. So the mountain arose and Shrewsbury was saved. At one point or another the Devil appears to have been very busy in Shropshire knocking the scenery about. When later on I found myself at Ironbridge, with its furnaces and factories, I really thought the Devil must still be busy in Shropshire, for who but he could have entered into the mind of man to cause him to spoil so fair a spot for the sake of mere money-making? Remove the dirty, mean, and ugly town and all connected with it, Madeley too, with its collieries close above, and smoky Broseley but a mile away, and I doubt if the Severn could show in all its pleasant meanderings from its source in lone Plynlimmon to the sea a spot so fair as this would be--and was in the days of old.