Clifton Grove is also inseparable from the memory of Henry Kirke White, the young poet who died at Cambridge, from overwork, in his twenty-first year. The following quotation from his poem on the place may serve as a specimen of his verses, which we think, in the present day, would not have greatly pleased "reviewers, men, or bookstalls," and may give an idea of the Grove at the beginning of the present century:-- "And oh, how sweet this walk o'erhung with wood That winds the margin of the solemn flood! What rural objects steal upon the sight! What rising views prolong the calm delight! "The brooklet branching from the silver Trent, The whispering birch by every zephyr bent, The woody islands and the naked mead, The lowly hut half hid in groves of reed, The rural wicket and the rural stile, And frequent interspersed the woodman's pile. "Above, below, where'er I turn my eyes, Rocks, waters, woods in grand succession rise. High up the cliff the varied groves ascend, And mournful larches o'er the wave impend." Not many towns in the Midland counties of England have a finer natural situation than Nottingham. The upland district on the western bank of the Trent terminates in an abrupt craggy scarp above the wide and level valley. The river, just opposite to the town, has swung away into the plain to a distance of more than half a mile from its ancient course, and a tributary stream called the Leen, which has cut deep into the plateau, intervenes between it and the ancient town. This, no doubt, was once limited to the scarped headland which rises between the two valleys, though probably it straggled down into the plain, and gradually extended along the road leading to the old bridge over the Trent. But during the present century Nottingham has gained enormously in size, and lost correspondingly in beauty. It has become less picturesque, though probably more healthy, and certainly more convenient; but now it is not wholly guiltless of smoke; it bristles in parts with chimneys, the utilitarian substitute for spires, and it would require very subjective treatment at the hands of an artist who was desirous of depicting the beautiful. Still, there are some views of the town, from the side of the Leen, which are not even now without a certain beauty. Scarped cliffs of grey sandstone support the gardens and terraces of the castle, in the rear of which the town rises from the valley in alternating lines of trees and houses, broken here and there by the steeple or tower of a church. But in olden times, when the valley plain was free from railways, factories, and chimneys, Nottingham must have been a singularly picturesque town. Then the view from the valley of the Trent, especially from near the influx of the Leen, must have been a worthy subject for an artist. The southern wall of the town crowned the grey cliff; above it rose the noble tower of