From this upland country--pleasantly varied by cornfield, pasture, and copses--the Avon makes its way to the northern margin of the county, and then, working round to the south-west, forms for a while the boundary between it and Leicestershire. Entering Warwickshire, the Avon passes near Rugby. All know the great railway junction, immortalised by Charles Dickens, and the famous school, with its memories of old Laurence Sheriffe the founder, and Dr. Arnold, its great headmaster. Then the river is joined by the tributary Swift, which, while hardly more than a brook, has rippled by the little town of Lutterworth. There, higher up the slope, is the church where Wiclif ministered, the pulpit from which he preached. There, spanning the stream, is a little bridge, the successor of that from which the ashes, after his bones had been dug up and burnt by order of the Council of Constance, were flung into the water. So the Swift bore them to the Avon, and the Avon to the Severn, and that to the sea, to be dispersed abroad into all lands--"which things are an allegory." [Illustration: THE UPPER OR WARWICKSHIRE AVON.] The Avon flows on through the pretty, restful scenery of Warwickshire, which has been rendered classic by the authoress of "Adam Bede," twisting in great curves gradually more and more to the south. It leaves, some three miles away from its right bank, the spires and ancient mansions of Coventry--once noted for its ribbons, now busy in making cycles; it sweeps round Stoneleigh Abbey, with its beautiful park and fine old oaks, where a comparatively modern mansion has replaced a Cistercian monastery. On the opposite side, half a league away, are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, with their memories of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth. It glides beneath Guy's Cliff, where the famous Earl, the slayer of the Dun Cow, after his return from the Holy Land, dwelt in a cave as a hermit, unrecognised, till the hour of his death, by his own wife, though she daily gave him alms. A little further, and a short distance away on the left, on the tributary Leam, is the modern town of Leamington, which began a career of prosperity just a century ago on the discovery of sundry mineral springs. Then the Avon sweeps by the foot of the hill on which stands the old town of Warwick. The site is an ideal one--a hill for a fortress, a river for a moat--and has thus been occupied from a distant antiquity. Briton, Roman, Saxon--all are said to have held in turn the settlement, till the Norman came and built a castle. The town retains two of its gates and several old timbered houses, one of which, the Leicester Hospital, founded in 1571, is perhaps the finest in the Midlands; and on the top of the hill, set so that "it cannot be hid," is the great church of St. Mary. It is in the Perpendicular style, more or less, for the tower and nave were rebuilt after a great fire in 1694, the choir escaping with little injury. Two fine tombs of the Earls of Warwick are in this