all its rush, bustle, and advantages! It is a spot that might be called intolerably dull, or intensely restful, according to the mind and mood of man. We deemed it the latter, but then we only stopped there a few waking hours (one cannot count the time one sleeps); had we remained longer perhaps we might have thought differently!
AN ANCIENT COLLEGE First we made our way to the market square, which, by the way, we had all to ourselves, except for a sleeping dog. In the centre of the square stands the tall and weather-stained shaft of an ancient cross, elevated on a basement of four steps. The top of the shaft is now surmounted by a stone ball in place of the cross of old. This is capped by a well-designed weather-vane; so this ancient structure, raised by religious enthusiasm, and partially destroyed by religious reforming—deforming, some people will have it—zeal, now serves a useful and picturesque purpose, and could hardly be objected to by the sternest Puritan.
Then, wandering about, we espied a fine old brick building of two stories, the front being flanked by octagonal towers, a building not unlike Eton College Chapel on a smaller scale. This proved to be Magdalen School, founded in the fifteenth century by the famous William de Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, 1459, who was born in the town and who also founded Magdalen College, Oxford, which little history we picked up accidentally that evening in an odd copy of a Lincolnshire Directory we discovered at our hotel. We did not hunt it up of set purpose. I mention this, not wishing to be considered didactic.
