The great, empty-looking parish church, an example of the depths of commonplace to which the Perpendicular style can descend, has nothing of interest, partly, no doubt, because Sir Gilbert Scott was had in during 1863-4 to “restore” it, at a cost of £9,000, and partly because it is designed in a monotonous repetition of window for window, and moulding for moulding, from end to end. It is, in short, tedious and tiresome to a degree, and contains a very nasty effigy of “Joana Wallis,” dated 1675. A depressing influence seems to prevade the district between Loughborough and the Trent. The scenery is of no striking quality and the villages seem to have experienced their best days. Hathern is an uninteresting village of framework knitters, and Kegworth—in Domesday Book “Cogesworde”—that comes next after it, makes hosiery, brews beer, manufactures plaster, and carries on a variety of useful industries, but looks as grim as a person responsible for thousands who has but a penny in his pocket. It is a gaunt townlet, with large and equally gaunt church of the Decorated period, standing in a commanding position in the centre of the unlovely place. Both alike look ragged and poverty-stricken, and although a large sum has been spent on restoring the building, it still looks as though no care had been taken of it for centuries. A bell still rings curfew at 8 p.m. in the winter months. The Vestry was formerly the residence of a “domus inclusus,” or hermit. Tom Moore, that merry Irishman, found it possible to write poetry at Kegworth, but he performed some marvellous things. Tommy dearly loved a lord, and was here in 1811 for the express purpose of being near his friend, Lord Moira, whose park at Donington is near by. When my lord went to India, the poet removed to Mayfield, and thence to Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes, to be near Lord Lansdowne. Three miles away to the right of the road and across the Soar, into Nottinghamshire, is Gotham, a place so famed in legend that the impulse to visit it is irresistible. The way lies by Kingston-on-Soar, where there is a beautiful little church with wonderfully elaborate monument to the Babington family, bearing their punning rebus of the “Babe in Tun.” The “Wise Men of Gotham” is an ironical saying, for the Gothamites are proverbial for stupidity; but, like the fatuous behaviour of the Wiltshire “moonrakers” of Bishop’s Cannings, the childish simplicity of the original Gotham wiseacres was merely assumed. Their great exploit was to plant a hedge round a cuckoo perched on a bush, in order to keep him in; and on a hill one mile distant may to this day be found the “Cuckoo Bush,” pointed out as the scene of their efforts. It is an ivy-grown circular bank in a plantation enclosing a group of trees. [Sidenote: _THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM_]