The old churches of Leicester are fairly numerous, and very interesting. St. Nicholas’ was built in Saxon and early Norman times, chiefly from the materials of the Roman wall, by whose remains it stands. Here Leicester is seen in its latest development, the neighbourhood having been cut up and largely rebuilt since the advent of the Great Central Railway. There remained until that event a curious street at the side of St. Nicholas, known as “Holy Bones,” but in the great clearances “Holy Bones” disappeared, and only gaunt remains of houses and factories mark the site of it. The name arose from a great find of bones here, supposed to be relics of sacrifices made in the Temple of Janus. Their sanctity, seeing that they are thought to be the bones of oxen, has been challenged. St. Mary de Castro, whose spire is one of the most prominent landmarks of the town, is unquestionably the finest church, but extraordinarily dark. It is Norman, Early English, and Decorated, and has two naves. But an architectural account of St. Mary’s would occupy many pages. I like to think how here, in this very building, Henry the Sixth, at the time only five years of age, but already four years a king, passed the midnight vigil that formed part of a new knight’s probation. With him, forty others were received into the ranks of chivalry. How many of them survived the bloody Wars of the Roses that raged in after years around the person of that unhappy King? [Illustration: ST. MARGARET’s.] [Sidenote: “_SMOKE FARTHING_”] St. Margaret’s, down in the low-lying, soggy Church Gate, is not, in its present form, the oldest church, having been rebuilt in the Perpendicular period, but it is the successor and representative of the mother-church of the town, built about A.D. 600, when Leicester was the seat of a Saxon bishop. It stands not so far from the site of Leicester Abbey, and the street of “Sanvey Gate,” at the corner, indeed derives its name from “Sancta Via,” having been the way by which the mediæval religions processions came and went. The great imposing tower, built from the proceeds of a tax of “Smoke Farthing,” levied on the domestic hearths of the parish, is now a very weathered and crumbling mass, but all the more venerable-looking; and when the proposed restoration has taken place, it is to be feared that much of the majesty of it, will have vanished until such time as the surrounding factories have deposited more soot. But that will take a considerable time, for Leicester is not a sooty place. For an example of thorough and unsparing restoration we must turn to St. Martin’s. Strangers, gazing at the exterior and the tall broach spire, imagine they have before them a new structure, but it is chiefly an Early English building, and, as the interior proves, a very fine one, and built on the site of a Roman temple to Diana. An epitaph of strange human interest is seen by the south porch:—