The road in the centre of Brixworth street dips down steeply in a tree-shaded hollow, and is very narrow, with stone walls on either side. In one of these may still be seen, recessed slightly, the spring representing “Bartlet’s Well,” opened in 1631 by Margaret Bartlet “for the use of travellers.” But although the spring is in going order, I observe that the travellers who pass this way prefer the tipple kept at the inn, hard by. Two miles and a half ahead, and then less than a quarter of a mile to the right hand, lies Lamport, but so hidden that none would suspect its existence. The wayside “Swan” inn, opposite the by-road, derives its sign from the Swan crest of the Ishams, the ancient owners of Lamport (whose name, by the way, is pronounced I-sham, not Ish-am). Lamport is a village of whose kind there are still, happily, many hundreds in England, in spite of the hurry and fever of the age. It is small, it is beautiful in a mild way, it is quiet, and no celebrated or merely notorious person has ever done it the honour to be born within its bounds. A little more beauty, a slight connection with history, and it would become a place of resort. I suspect that this something less than a quarter of a mile remove from the road must in these latter days be a profound source of congratulation to the inhabitants, who live, by virtue of it, “the world forgetting and by the world forgot,” or at least by those undesirables who thunder along the main road in motor-cars, enveloped, and enveloping others, in clouds of dust. Such an one passed me on the road, equipped with some damnable new contrivance in place of the usual horn: a shrieking something like a soul in torment. As the yelling abomination died away and the dust began to settle down, and the trees could again be seen and the birds heard, I wondered why such things could be permitted to exist. Lamport church stands by the wayside, and opposite is Lamport Park, the seat of the Ishams. The Hall, though by no means remarkable for its architecture, is curious by reason of the family mottoes and pious sentiments carved on the exterior, by which you gather that the Ishams have always been amiable persons, and prone to find amusement in small things. Even their name seems ever to have afforded them a perennial source of enjoyment. It suggested to some remote forbear the idea of a punning Latin motto, _Ostendo non ostento_; Englished as “I show I sham not.” This is duly set forth along the front of the Hall, together with “In respect of things etarnal, life is vayn and mortal,” and “In things transitory resteth no glory.” [Illustration: LAMPORT CHURCH.] [Sidenote: _THE ISHAMS_]