Away in the distance, rising majestically over the miners’ rubbish-heaps, comes the whalelike outline of the Wrekin, shaggy and blue-black with pines. Not a great hill, compared with the Stretton Hills and the Welsh mountains presently to come in sight; but its isolated position in the surrounding Shropshire plain gives it a commanding appearance, and has made the Wrekin a centre to which all Salopian hearts fondly turn in response to that old toast, honoured with three times three, “To all friends round the Wrekin.” The toast has not so limited an application as those who are not Salopians, or know not Shropshire, might imagine, for the Wrekin is visible from incredible distances, and the view _from_ it comprises not only the whole of Shropshire, but a radius of distant hills sweeping the horizon round from Malvern, the Warwickshire Edge Hill, the Peak in Derbyshire, the mountains about Llangollen, the Berwyns, Cader Idris, and Plinlimmon, to the Brecon Beacons. The famous hill rises only 1,260 feet above the surrounding plain, but just because it _is_ a plain, its Protean bulk looms larger and loftier than many a taller eminence. Protean the Wrekin is because the outline of it, viewed from different quarters, varies singularly. Whale-like from Wellington, from the south-west it looks like a truncated sugar-loaf, and seen from the road near Wroxeter resembles a huge and shapely dome. Wellington lies a mile distant from the road, but straggling outposts of houses extend all the way, and at Cock Corner one may look down the cross-road and clearly perceive the existence of the town and what manner of town it is. To coaching travellers Wellington was but a name and a distant mass of roofs; for, with but two minutes to change horses at the “Cock”—or, if they travelled by the famous Shrewsbury “Wonder,” a minute at Haygate inn, a mile onward—they were gone, and roofs and chimneys sank, as though by magic, beyond the rounded fields and tall hedgerows. The “Cock” has remained game to the present day, and has witnessed the disappearance of its once prosperous neighbour, the “Hollybush.” That picturesquely named inn was a coaching house of a humbler sort, and carriers and coal-waggoners made it a house of call. Now a private house, brilliantly whitewashed, it seems by that dazzling raiment to have put away, as far as possible, all coaly memories. XVI