No marvel that a water frolic becomes dignified into a regatta there, that for once, within the circuit of the year, the great and small, the proud and humble, rich and poor, can mingle, to look together upon a common object of amusement—that fashion and poverty can meet in the field of pleasure—St. Giles and St. James acknowledge the existence, nor frown at the presence of each other. And who does not rejoice in the festivity, almost the sole remnant of national sport left us in this iron-working age? Who that can spare an hour from the counter or the loom, or desk—from scribbling six-and-eight-penny opinions, or scratching hieroglyphical prescriptions for _aqua pura_ draughts, does not contrive to find some mode of transit by earth, air, or water to the scene of mirth. Even a soaking shower is unavailing to damp the ardour of the multitude, and not unseldom lends fresh stimulus to fun and laughter among the merry-hearted denizens of smoke-dried city streets and lanes. But we must not linger in their midst—the gay pleasure-boats, with their shining sails, tacking and bending to the breeze, the swift skullers in the gay uniforms, the eager faces that line the course, the signal guns and flags of victory, the music, and the mirth—all tell that the spirit of enjoyment is not yet quite gone out from among us. We must now pass to other, and far different objects, and from the present, travel back to the past, whose page of history unfolds itself in the nearer object that meets our eye, the whitened sides of the “Lollard’s pit,” where martyrs of old poured forth their dying prayers; and yielded up their bodies to be burned as witness of their faith—where Bilney listened to the words of his murderers, beseeching him to release them before the people from all blame, that they might not suffer loss of popularity or alms—and where he turned and said: “I pray you, good people, be never worse to these men for my sake, as though they should be the authors of my death. It is not they;”—then was bound to the stake and slowly burned, in the presence of the multitudes that clothed the natural amphitheatre around. The heights above are crowned by the ruins of the old priory of St. Leonards, on the one side, and on the other by a few fragments of St. Michael’s chapel, whose vestiges, under a name assigned to them through their later notoriety, as the stronghold of the rebel Kett, yet linger as landmarks on the early pathway of national progress and reform.