It is the county of pork-pies, and once claimed to rear the largest sheep and grow the heaviest fleeces. Not so much has been said of Leicestershire as an industrial county, but its hosiery trade is the largest in England. Despite the stockingers, the bootmakers, and in some districts the coal-miners, Leicestershire is nevertheless a very agricultural and rural county. “Bean-belly” Leicestershire Drayton calls it, and there is a “Barton-in-the-Beans” near Gopsall; but there is, on the other hand, also a “Barton-in-Fabis,” or “Barton-in-the-Beans,” in Nottinghamshire. The corollary of being “bean-bellied” seems to be dull-witted; but, if we are to judge from Leicestershire folklore, the people are gifted with exceptional humour, of the saturnine kind, as witness this reproof to the boastful: If all the waters wer one sea, And all the trees wer one tree, And this here tree was to fall into that there sea, My sakes! what a splish-splash there _would_ be! And here is another example: Yew thowt, did ’ee? Aiy, ’Yew thowt a lig, Loike Hudson’s pig. “Like Hudson’s pig?” “Yais. ’Niver hard on ’em, ’a s’pose?” “No.” “Whoy, ’a thowt, th’ silly feller, as they wer a-gwine ter _kill_ ’en, and they wuz on’y arfter putten a ring trew ’is noaze.” [Sidenote: _JOE STOKES’s PIG_] There is a tragical variant of this, in which “Joe Stokes’s” pig is the unfortunate hero—“Ye’re loike Joe Stokes’s pig: ’e thowt as how ’e wer a-gwine ter hev ’is brekfuss, but they wuz a-gwine ter mek poark on ’en.” The days when Market Harborough was a little market-town, interested in nothing else but agriculture and hunting, are done. It is now, indeed, a busy little place, and, with its various industrial enterprises, not so little as it was. Chief of these is Symington’s corset factory, employing 580 hands; but elsewhere may be noticed manufactories of rubber soles and heels, pea-flour, and numerous other articles of commerce. Its remarkably broad chief street, where the cattle-markets and the October Fair have been held for many centuries, is still, however, on ordinary days singularly empty; and now that a Cattle Market, costing £28,000, has been built, is less characteristic than of old. But it is a magnificent picture, this of Harbro town, that unfolds itself before the traveller as he comes in along the road. There, peaking up grandly, are the exquisite tower and crocketed spire of the ancient church, very lovely and worshipful, with the old timber-framed Grammar School humbly beneath, founded in 1614 by Robert Smyth, an old City of London official, its sides decorated with plaster panels and its stout timbers adorned with pious mottoes: the open space beneath designed for use as the Butter Market.