who may well be termed the hero of the Lowlands. How is it, I wonder, that the daring deeds of Highlanders of all nations appeal so much more to most poetic and prose writers, and to the multitude generally, than the equally valiant achievements of the Lowlanders? Was not the long struggle of the Dutch for freedom as heroic and as worthy of laudatory song as that of the Swiss mountaineers?
The landlord of our inn pointed out to us the site of the castle of the Wakes in a field not far from the market-place. "Some dungeons had been discovered there many years ago," we were informed, "but now there are no remains of any masonry visible," and we found it as the landlord said. All that we observed on the spot were some grass-grown mounds, manifestly artificial, and the traces of the moat. Close by is a large pool of water, supplied by a never-failing spring that bubbles up from below; this pool overflows into a wide stream "that goes right round the town." Kingsley describes the site as being "not on one of the hills behind, but on the dead flat meadow, determined doubtless by the noble fountain, bourn, or brunne, which rises among the earthworks, and gives its name to the whole town. In the flat meadow bubbles up still the great pool of limestone water, crystal clear, suddenly and at once; and runs away, winter and summer, a stream large enough to turn many a mill, and spread perpetual verdure through the flat champaign lands."
What struck us, however, as being the most interesting feature in Bourn—which though a very ancient town has an aggravating air of newness
