The Trent now begins to draw near to Nottingham, and the villages show signs of the approach to a great centre of manufacture. On a cliff above the river is Clifton Hall. According to the county historian, the house stands on a rock of alabaster, "curiously inlaid in many places with beautiful spars." It is approached by "an avenue of trees, a mile in length, upon gentle swells of the earth, which happily destroy the formal line which would have been shown upon a level surface. Below, the silvery Trent meanders." Tradition links a grim story of a murder to the pleasant groves of Clifton, for here, as we are told, "the Clifton Beauty, who was debauched and murdered by her sweetheart, was hurled down the precipice into her watery grave. The place is shown you, and it has been long held in veneration by lovers. Agreeable must be the shady walks above or below on the water's brink. Here the blackbird and the thrush whistle through the day, and the little redbreast in the evening sings the creation to calm repose in plaintive song. Here commerce is wafted from shore to shore, and industry flows for the reciprocal benefit of the human race." Since these words were written, industry has gone on flowing to an extent which would have astonished the historian, and would perhaps have rather deranged the measured progress of his periods. But, even now, the barges not seldom form groups--as they did when Turner sketched--tempting to the artist, and the natural beauty of the approach to Nottingham has not been wholly destroyed by tall mills and lofty chimneys. The Cliftons, from whom the Hall and Grove take their name, are an old and important Nottinghamshire family. Thoroton duly records the items of a feast given at the marriage of one of its members in the year 1530, which are so curious as to be worth repeating as an indication of the state of England some three and a half centuries since. For the more solid comestibles were provided two oxen, six calves, six wethers, seven lambs, and ten pigs. Among the lighter were "sixty couple conys," four dozen chickens, twelve swans, eight cranes, sixteen "hearonsews" (herons), and ten bitterns. To quench the thirst of the guests, there were three hogsheads of wine, "one white, one red, and one claret." The prices were very different from those of Nottingham market at the present time. A pig cost fivepence, a wether two shillings and fourpence, and a calf fourpence more. A chicken could be purchased for a penny, and a couple of rabbits for fivepence. A swan was priced at sixpence, and a crane at fivepence; for the sixteen herons and the ten bitterns the same sum was paid, viz., fourteenpence. One might visit Nottingham market now for a long time before getting a chance of buying any one of these four birds, and would then have to pay a fancy price for it. Cygnet, as everyone knows who has tasted it, is an excellent dish, but we should have thought that the other wild birds would have needed a hunter's appetite.