lower town is the market-place, a triangular area of slightly over four acres, where the market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the "Nottingham lambs," and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood. SOUTHWELL. [Illustration: SOUTHWELL MINSTER AND RUINS OF THE ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE.] [Illustration: THE NAVE, SOUTHWELL MINSTER.] We will now go down the valley of the Trent below Nottingham, and, mounting the gentle hills that border Sherwood Forest, come to the Roman station, Ad Pontem, of which the Venerable Bede was the historian. Here Paulinus was baptized, and it was early made the site of an episcopal see. The name was Sudwell at the Norman Conquest, and then it became Southwell, and the noted minster was one of the favorite residences of the Archbishop of York. It is a quiet, old-fashioned place, with plenty of comfortable residences, and in a large churchyard on ground sloping away from the main street, with the ruins of the archbishop's palace near by, is Southwell Minster. There are few finer examples of a Norman building remaining in England, the three towers, nave, transepts, and chapter-house forming a majestic group. An enormous western window has been inserted by later architects, rather to the detriment of the gable, and this produces a singular effect. The interior of the minster is magnificent. The Norman nave is of eight bays with semicircular arches, surmounted by a triforium of rows of arches almost equal to those below, and rising from piers with clustered side-columns. It is nearly three-fourths the height of the lower stage, and this produces a grand effect. The flat roof is modern, it and the bells having been replaced after the church was burned in the last century. The ruins of the archiepiscopal palace, erected six hundred years ago, have been availed of in one portion for a dwelling-house. Wolsey built part of it, and beneath the battlemented wall enclosing the garden there was not long ago found the skeleton of a soldier in armor, a relic of the Civil Wars. The name of the town is derived from its wells. The South Well is a short distance outside the limits in a little park. The Holy Well, which was inside the minster, is now covered up. Lady Well was just outside the church-walls, but a clergyman fell into it one dark night and was drowned, and it too has been closed. St. Catherine's Well was surmounted by a chapel, and is in repute as a cure for rheumatism. The ancient inn of the Saracen's Head in Southwell, not far from the minster on the main street, witnessed the closing scene of the Civil War. After the battle of Naseby the Scotch had reached Southwell, and Montreville, an agent of Cardinal Mazarin, came there to