With the gift of Francis Trigg, “_Welborne quondam Concionator amans_,” we leave Grantham. No longer the small market town, whose City Fathers never stirred in the streets without their gowns, the Alderman distinguished by his tippet with its gold clasps, but a busy manufacturing and railway town, with growing suburbs and a population of from 20,000 to 30,000, it yet keeps something of its country aspect. The trees at the back of the church and along the North Road, the splendid chestnut in Finkin Street, close to the middle of the town, the easy escape from the houses to the slopes of the Harrowby Hills, or the canal path to Harlaxton, make it a pleasant place to see or stay in, and compensate for the bleak features of its approach from the south. Though no one could claim for its surroundings the privilege of startling beauty, yet there is no more smiling a piece of country in the English Midlands than that of which it is the centre. Cut off from the Fenland flats on the east by a long table-land with a gradual eastward slope, and on the south by the broken country towards Bourn and Stamford, it has on the north the long line of pretty villages which mark the road to Lincoln, and on the west the vale of Belvoir, overhung by the wooded escarpments of the Leicestershire Wolds. It is the centre of a country which possesses some of the most beautiful village churches and the noblest houses in England. Due north of the town is Belton House, where Wren’s gifts of moderation in proportion and of masterly internal spacing are at their best; and just beyond is Syston, high on the brow of a hill, and gazing across the intervening ridges at Belvoir. Between Grantham and Belvoir are the great modern houses of Harlaxton and Denton. Harlaxton, a palace in size, is set on a terrace at the end of a straight drive which dips down from the Melton road and then rises gradually towards the house, and is backed by a view of wood and hill. And on the south, not comparing with these in size, are the beautiful little houses which the wool merchants of these parts built for themselves—Anthony Ellys’ house at Great Ponton, and Thomas Coney’s high stone mansion at Bassingthorpe, and, farther on, the larger hall which Richard Thimelby built in 1510 at Irnham. These are all within no long distance from the town, and all, except Belvoir, within the county. For those whose acquaintance with Lincolnshire is limited to its legendary reputation of flatness, fogginess, and, if one may use the word, fenniness, there could be no better object-lesson than the climb along the lane from Great Ponton to Bassingthorpe, or the walk from Harlaxton to Grantham, with the great spire of St. Wulfran’s framed, like the vignette on the title-page of a book, within the arches formed by the intervening trees. STAMFORD BY V. B. CROWTHER-BEYNON, M.A., F.S.A.