Whalley—the Field of Wells, as our Saxon forefathers called it—is one of the most picturesque, as also one of the most interesting villages in Lancashire. It is the centre, too, of a district which almost claims to rank as classic ground. Few places possess greater charms from a scenic point of view, or a higher interest from the historical associations attaching to them. The parish to which it gives name covers a wide extent of territory. Originally, before the great parishes of Blackburn, Chipping, Mitton, Rochdale, Ribchester, and Slaidburn had been carved out of it, it embraced an area of four hundred square miles; and even now it is accounted the largest parish within the diocese, being equal to about one-ninth of the whole county. Well might the chief ecclesiastics of this, the oldest Christian edifice in Lancashire, dignify themselves in old times with the imposing title of “Deans” of Whalley, though the magnitude of their domain was surely not a sufficient justification for their setting at naught the decrees of Holy Church, and the vows of celibacy it imposed, by perpetuating a race of priests who married and transmitted their offices from father to son for successive generations: a state of things that continued until the Council of Lateran not only forbade but disannulled such marriages, and so destroyed the constitution by which the church of Whalley had been governed for nearly five hundred years. A more charmingly diversified country than that of which this quiet little pastoral village is the centre it is difficult to conceive. Within the wide range of vision it commands we may note the type of almost every stage of civilisation the country has passed through. Though a railway viaduct, lofty as the Pont du Gard, bridges the Calder, and a tall chimney or two may here and there be seen, the virgin features of the country have as yet been happily but little scarred by the intrusion of manufacturing industry. The wild breezy moors and the wooded cloughs and dingles retain much of their primitive character, while the fair and fertile valley still bears evidence of the patient labour of the monks in redeeming the soil from its primeval barrenness. Every object that can beautify or adorn the landscape is there in picturesque variety, charming by the very order of Nature’s disorder. The Ribble, winding its way towards the sea, as it flows by Ribchester, reminds us of the days when the Roman held dominion—when the subjects of the Cæsars built their fortresses and reared their stately temples, and their chief, Agricola, taught the naked and woad-stained Britons the science of agriculture and the arts of civilisation. The quaint Runic crosses standing in the churchyard, weathered and worn with the blasts of twelve hundred years, serve as memorials of the time when Edwin, the Saxon king of Northumbria, embraced the doctrines of the Cross, and the great missionary Paulinus brought the glad tidings to our pagan forefathers dwelling in this