remote corner of Lancashire; for tradition affirms that on this spot the Gospel of Peace and Love was proclaimed in those ancient days. There stands the messenger of truth; there stands The legate of the skies, his theme divine, His office sacred, his credentials clear; By him the violated law speaks out Its thunders, and by him, in strains as sweet As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace. And the venerable church—“the white church under the Leigh,” as it was anciently designated—that peeps above the enshrouding foliage, is doubtless the successor of a pagan temple, for it was then the fashion to convert the edifices of the old religion to the purposes of the new. The ruined keep of Clitheroe Castle, crowning the limestone rock that rises abruptly from the plain, carries the mind back to the times of the stout Norman earls, when men ruled by the stern will and the strong arm, and vigilant sentinels upon the watch-towers looked afar for the blaze of the baleful fires that should warn them of the approaching foe. Within a short two miles of the stately stronghold of the Lacies are the dilapidated remains of Waddington Hall—a house which, though it escaped the fiercer tide of politics and strife, is yet associated with the period when England was drained of its best blood by the Wars of the Roses; for it was at Waddington, which had for a time afforded him an asylum, that the “meek usurper,” Henry VI., after the disastrous fight at Hexham, in 1464, was betrayed into the hands of his enemies, and, though he escaped for a moment, he was caught ere he could cross the Ribble at Brungerley hipping-stones, and given up to the vengeance of his successful rivals, for which act of perfidy his captor, Thomas Talbot, was rewarded by the Yorkist Edward with grants of land. He did not, however, long enjoy them, for when the White Rose of York drooped before Henry of Richmond on the Field of Bosworth, the same Talbot experienced one of the common reverses of war, and had to surrender his ill-gotten gains. Westward, lying among the tall trees, where the sharp corner of Yorkshire runs in between the Hodder and the Ribble, is Little Mitton Hall, another relic of the past that serves to tell the story of the changing life of our great nation, and to show how the frowning fortress gradually softened into the stately mansion when order spread as law succeeded might, and time had widened and mellowed our social institutions. The giant form of Pendle Hill, sloping upwards from the green valley, with its wild gorges, where the old forest of Bowland formerly stretched its length, its broad turfy swamps, its sombre masses of blackened rock, and its bleak ridges of “cloud-capped” desolation overshadowing the verdant landscape, conjures up humiliating memories of the credulity, the ignorant superstition, and the revolting practices which obtained for merry-hearted Lancashire so unenviable a reputation in the golden days of the virgin queen and