them, were at one time, the only inhabitants of Christendom, who were at all acquainted with such sciences as then peered above the mists of overwhelming ignorance. Of history, they may be said to be the modern fathers, and tho' perhaps, like the age in which they lived, in some respects, blind themselves, they led, not indirectly to the enlightening of the present age. But in their own times they were far from useless; their monasteries were ever ready to receive the wearied traveller, and many persons of family, tho' of broken fortunes were honorably maintained at their board. The poor were gratuitously relieved from their kitchens, and that in a manner, upon the whole, more favorable to religion and morality than they are now by those parish rates, which the abolition of monasteries, and the partition of their property among private individuals, have rendered so oppressively necessary. To these valuable purposes the revenues of our Abbey were fully competent, for it possessed the advowsons of thirty six parish churches in Leicester and its County, which together with lands in various places, and rights in particular districts, produced annually for its disposal more than one thousand pounds. Quitting the Abbey meadow, and passing the North lock, we still continue our walk along pleasing rural scenes. The sweeps of the river which here beautifully meanders, wash, almost closely, a large extent of town, affording an agreeable prospect on the left, and a slope finely diversified with groves and pasturage descends gently to the meadows on the right. Approaching the Bow-Bridge, we pass a plot of ground insulated by the Soar, called the Black Friars, once the scite of a monastery belonging to the Augustine or Black Friars, of which no traces now remain. That arm of the river which flows under the west bridge, is by some supposed, from its passing under the scite of the old Roman town, to be a canal formed by that people for the convenience of their dwellings. It is now called the _New Soar_, and whether it can authentically boast the honor of being a Roman work, the antiquary may perhaps endeavour in vain to decide. A tunnel or Roman sewer, was discovered in 1793, at an equal distance between the Roman ruin, called Jewry Wall, and the river, and in a direct line towards the latter, which contained some curious fragments of Roman pottery.