Wolverhampton has nothing to do with wolves. It was never the “wolves’ town” of Dr. Mandell Creighton’s contemptibly childish etymology, but probably derived its name from Wulfrun, sister of Ethelred II. She it was who in 994 founded the great collegiate church of St. Peter, that, collegiate no longer, stands on the crest of the waterless ridge forming the site of the town. It is true that there had been both a church and a town here before that time, for Wulfhere, first Christian king of Mercia, dedicated a church to St. Mary at “Hamtun” in the year 657, and the names of both founders have such close points of similarity that there must ever remain some uncertainty as to which of them really gave Hampton its distinguishing prefix. It may be noted as a curious fact that the town is still known in the surrounding districts as “Hampton.” Although it is not approached from Birmingham and Bilston by any appreciable hill, Wolverhampton is seen by one standing in Queen Square—now, as ever, the centre of the town to occupy an elevated site, sloping rapidly towards the west. It is, indeed, situated, very curiously, three hundred feet above sea-level, and on the great watershed dividing the river-system of the Midlands. To the east flows the Trent into the German Ocean, and to the west the Severn and its tributaries empty themselves into the Bristol Channel; but, decreeing though it does the destinies of those rivers, this ridge itself sends forth only the rivulet called the Smestow. Wolverhampton is (not very happily) called the “Capital of the Black Country.” That title is misleading, for the reason that, although it has grown enormously, and has long ceased to be the agricultural market-town it once was, it stands, not in the centre, but at the very edge of that busy and grimy tract. Coming through the Black Country from Birmingham you suddenly, on taking leave of Wolverhampton, step over the threshold again into a land of grass and trees and clear sunshine.