STAMFORD compels enthusiasm, from the first glimpse of it on entering, to the last regretful backward glance on leaving. It is historic, picturesque, stately, aristocratic, and cleanly, all at once. Its stone-built mansions and houses are chiefly of the Renaissance period, from Elizabeth onwards to the time of George the First, and it is in this sort the most beautiful town in England, after Oxford and Cambridge, and even in some aspects surpassing them. Apart from its lovely churches, one seeks not Gothic architecture at Stamford but the stateliness of classic methods as understood in the sixteenth and seventeenth century revival. It is this especial architectural character which gives the town such an air of academic distinction and leads the stranger to compare it with the great university towns, even before the fact comes to his knowledge that Stamford itself was once the seat of a University. The entrance is of a peculiar stateliness, the broad quiet street descending, lined with dignified private houses, to where the river Welland flows beneath the bridge, dividing the counties of Northampton and Lincoln, and Stamford Baron from Stamford town. On the right hand rises the fine tower of St. Martin’s, its perforated battlements showing, lace-like, against the sky, just as when Turner painted his view. Lower down across the street straddles the sign of the great “George” inn, and a few steps forward serve to disclose the exquisite picture of St. Mary’s tower and spire soaring from the rising ground on the other side of the river. The “distracting bustle of the ‘George,’ which exceeded anything I ever saw or heard,” as the Reverend Thomas Twining wrote, in 1776, has long since become a thing of the past, and a certain quiet dignity now belongs to it, as to Stamford in general. The “George” is an inn with a history. Charles the First slept there, August 23, 1645, and a whole train of dignitaries at one time or another. “Billy the Butcher,” too, returning from Culloden, stayed in the house, and with his officers celebrated that victory. “Billy the Butcher,” one regrets to say, was the vulgar nickname by which the people called William, Duke of Cumberland.