by another route, through Thimbleby, instead of Woodhall, and arrived at his house in safety, thanks to the thoughtfulness of a neighbour. There are some good historic names among the older residents of the Woodhall Spa district. Howard is one, a name, which still stands high in the peerage of England. Gaunt is another frequent name; some of the members of the family, in the fine build of their bodily frame and their dark hair and complexion, seeming to indicate descent from ancient Norman blood. Fynes, or more properly Fiennes, is another; implying a connection with the Ducal House of Newcastle; the father of the present generation (a former tenant of the writer) having been named Charles Pelham Fynes. Monuments of the Fiennes family are common in neighbouring parishes, and they still hold considerable property in the surrounding district. CHAPTER III. NATURE NOTES. The great charm of Woodhall Spa is its “Rus in Urbe” character. The visitor can hardly go for ten minutes in any direction from his hotel or lodgings but he finds himself by the woodside, among the hedgerows or on the heath, where the jaded spirit, or the enfeebled frame, may draw fresh energy from the bracing air, richly charged with ozone, and even at times perceptibly impregnated with the tonic flavour of the iodine. The author of a recent publication who visited Woodhall Spa, in 1897, says: “Woodhall is as unlike the usual run of fashionable watering places as one can well imagine. It is a charming health resort—situated on a dry, sandy soil, where fir trees flourish—there are wild moors, purple with heather, and aglow with golden gorse; a land of health, and the air deliciously bracing. I do not think (he adds) there is a purer or more exhilarating air to be found in all England, or for that matter out of it.” {27a} Of the surrounding scenery it need hardly be said that we are not in the land of “the mountain,” though we have the “brown heath, and shaggy wood,” and occasionally, not far off, “the flood,” sung of by Scotia’s bard. But within sight are the Wolds, whose precipitous sides have, to my knowledge, astonished strangers, who, judging from the country traversed by the railway from Peterborough, expected to find the whole county as level as a billiard table. {27b} The flatness of the country, however, is amply made up for by other redeeming features. Within a mile of the Spa a view is obtained stretching more than 20 miles, with the grand Cathedral (which Ruskin says is “worth any two others in the kingdom”) crowning the “steep” hill of Lincoln on the horizon. “’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,” says the poet Campbell; and this prospect, slightly undulating, with extensive woods barring it at intervals, and village spires rising from their midst, seen through the marvellously clear atmosphere which we often enjoy, is a sight worth seeing.