In 1762 it was thought necessary to have another shy at the venerable relic, and evidence long remained of it, in another tablet, with the words, “Again repaired and restored in the second year of King George the Third, and of our Lord 1762.” The combination of loyalty and piety is rich indeed. Again, in 1832 a restoration was effected, at a cost of £300. Happily, no more tablets were affixed, and more happily still, the existing ones were removed. Further, in 1884, the restorations of earlier years were re-restored at a cost of £320. The shattered cross crowning the structure, destroyed at some remote period, has never been replaced. XVIII Whatever the truth of the old saying that the traveller might know, by the smell of the leather and the noise of the lapstones, when he was within a mile of Northampton, it scarcely holds good now, for although bootmaking, the ancient and distinctive trade of the town, is still its great staple industry, and is, as every one knows, infinitely larger and more important than ever before, it is scarcely to be distinguished at this distance. [Sidenote: _NORTHAMPTON_] Of course, as everywhere, the distant view of the town is nowadays largely a prospect of gasometers, and unless the traveller already knew of Northampton’s bootmaking trade he might, entering by the London Road and Cotton End, well believe he was come to a town of breweries, another Burton-on-Trent: for there, beside the railway level-crossing and the river Nene, stands the great brewery of Phipps & Co. “Northampton on the Nene”: that is a piece of school geography not readily forgotten, but, however greatly that information may bulk in the memory, both by reason of its alliteration and being so early insisted upon, the river Nene is not, truth to tell, so very much in evidence. The uninstructed might suppose it to be a canal, and a dirty one at that. It is not a prepossessing entrance, this narrow street of old and grimy, but not ancient, houses and third-rate shops, that leads up into the town, but many surprises await the explorer who, primed with armchair knowledge, sets out upon the road to correct his reading by his own observation. Such an one would find that only strangers speak of “Northampton” as spelled, giving full value to the “North.” To the townspeople it is “N’Thampton.” Each style seems quaint to those who favour the other.