The country is so level that the receding tower of Peterborough remains for a long time in sight, but soon,--as the train speeds through pastures of clover and through fields of green and red and yellow herbage, divided by glimmering hedges and diversified with red-roofed villages and gray church towers,--the land grows hilly, and long white roads are visible, stretching away like bands of silver over the lonely hill-tops. Figures of gleaners are seen, now and then, scattered through fields whence the harvest has lately been gathered. Sheep are feeding in the pastures, and cattle are couched under fringes of wood. The bright emerald of the sod sparkles with the golden yellow of the colt's-foot, and sometimes the scarlet waves of the poppy come tumbling into the plain, like a cataract of fire. Windmills spread their whirling sails upon the summits round about, and over the nestling ivy-clad cottages and over the stately trees there are great flights of rooks. A gray sky broods above, faintly suffused with sunshine, but there is no glare and no heat, and often the wind is laden with a fragrance of wildflowers and of hay. It is noon at Grantham, where there is just time enough to see that this is a flourishing city of red-brick houses and fine spacious streets, with a lofty, spired church, and far away eastward a high line of hills. Historic Newark is presently reached and passed,--a busy, contented town, smiling through the sunshine and mist, and as it fades in the distance I remember that we are leaving Lincoln, with its glorious cathedral, to the southeast, and to the west Newstead Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and Hucknall-Torkard,--places memorably associated with the poet Byron and dear to the heart of every lover of poetic literature. At Markham the country is exceedingly pretty, with woods and hills over which multitudes of rooks and starlings are in full career, dark, rapid, and garrulous. About Bawtry the land is flat, and flat it continues to be until we have sped a considerable way beyond York. But in the meantime we flash through opulent Doncaster, famed for manufactories and for horse-races, rosy and active amid the bright green fields. There are not many trees in this region, and as we draw near Selby,--a large red-brick city, upon the banks of a broad river,--its massive old church tower looms conspicuous under smoky skies. In the outskirts of this town there are cosy houses clad with ivy, in which the pilgrim might well be pleased to linger. But there is no pause, and in a little while magnificent York bursts upon the view, stately and glorious, under a black sky that is full of driving clouds. The minster stands out like a mountain, and the giant towers rear themselves in solemn majesty,--the grandest piece of church architecture in England! The brimming Ouse shines as if it were a stream of liquid ebony. The meadows around the city glow like living emeralds, while the harvest-fields are stored and teeming with stacks