But if the inns be quaint, how shall justice be done to the quaintness of the mediæval timbered houses in the High Street, or Butcher Row? There is no town in England—no, not even Chester—that can show a greater number, or more beautiful examples of black and white; while for queer street names Shrewsbury certainly bears away the bell. There are Wyle Cop, and the houses at its foot, once known as “under the Wyle”; Pride Hill, which does not refer to the almost Spanish pride of Salopians, but to an old mansion of the Pride family that once stood there; Shoplatch; Murivance, on the old town walls; Mardol, or “Dairy Fold”; and Dog-pole, originally “Duck-pool.” In midst of all these is the Market-square, with the old red sandstone Market-house in the centre; a place notable in these days rather for a pleasant and aristocratic quiet than for anything connected with marketing. The old trading interest went in 1809, when the new Market buildings and Corn Exchange—a not altogether successful combination of red and yellow brick—were opened. A curious inscription on the front of the old building dates it back to Queen Elizabeth’s time, and above, in a recess, stands the effigy of that Richard, Duke of York, whose head graced one of York’s gates in 1460, after the Battle of Wakefield. The effigy was brought from the old gatehouse on the Welsh Bridge, demolished in 1791. Armoured from heel to crown, it reminds one vividly of those feudal Daimios of Japan whom it was imperative to sweep away before that country could emerge from barbarism and savagery. And let it not be forgotten that our “chivalry” of old was as savage and as barbarous as anything to be found in China or any other Asiatic country. A warrior of unflinching resolve and proud belief in self was Clive, one of Shropshire’s greatest sons, whose bronze statue, its pedestal simply inscribed with his name, stands in advance of the Market-house. It was well merely to place his name there, for what do Shropshiremen need to be told of Clive? That would be an ill day when they should forget his youth, his manhood, his achievements, and his tragedy. To serve your country—to give her Empire, trade, and wealth—these things do not fall to the lot of many men, and it is well they should not, for they bring the curses and the rabid enmity of the factious, the deprecation of the feeble-hearted, and the vitriolic hatred of the envious and the mean-souled; ever the loudest voiced among the body politic. Few are those who, unmoved, could be the recipients of such base slander and ingratitude, and Clive was not one of them. The man who gave us India died by his own hand, but none the less done to death by the Little Englanders of that day.