features. Leaving the Fen district, which lies on the eastern side of the backbone of low hills, that run north to south, we will take the heaths and wolds and clays whose history has not adorned the pages of the antiquarian and historian. If, in the progress of art, the patrons of our sculptors should think of rivalling the petty kingdom of Bavaria, and have statues executed emblematic of the different counties, after the fashion of the California and Australia that adorn the terraces of the Crystal Palace, Lincolnshire should be represented as a stalwart lass leaning on a bone crushing-mill, holding in one hand the shepherd's crook that Lincoln shepherds do not use, her head crowned with a wreath of turnips, while a bas relief might represent the silver-gray rabbits retreating before the advancing army of improved Lincoln sheep on one side, while on the other a Cornish pumpingengine should frighten away flocks of wildfowl, and the decoy man be mournfully engaged in teaching his spaniel to drive a lot of short-horned oxen into a reclaimed meadow. The proper mode of visiting Lincolnshire is not by the rushing railway, which carries a man from Nottingham to Lincoln without giving him time to distinguish barley from wheat-but on horseback; the roads being excellent, and a broad belt of turf, generally to be found along the roadside, excellent cantering ground. You will see on either hand, according to the season of the year, beyond a border of well-cut hedges, heavy crops, neatly drilled in, of wheat, barley, beans, seeds, or turnips; the same fields, in autumn, filled like a fair with long-woolled sheep, penned in net folds, and fed bountifully with oil-cake; the fields all large and square; at convenient distances are snug homesteads, with modern buildings. Of late, the chimney for the steam-engine has begun to rise. The fold-yards, through the winter, are well-filled with straw, and well-trodden with store beasts-some with a dash of short-horn blood, others (and these are much in favour) with black-polled galloways, and some with deer-headed West Highlanders. But whatever the sort, they are generally good, with plenty of the coarse reedy straw of the county under them, plenty of cake to eat at least four pounds per head per day and nothing of that cold, wet, neglected look that so much afflicts one in some counties. As a general rule, the Lincolnshire farmers, on their light barley soils, prefer feeding off their roots with sheep upon the ground. shire breeder, whose colts they buy, and the London dealer. Now, by a sort of poetical justice, Lincolnshire owes a great share of her highland fertility to a discovery made at a kennel of Yorkshire fox-hounds, where a great accumulation of bones, accidentally scattered on the ground, led to a discovery of their valuable fertilizing properties. Much of its recent improvements Lincolnshire of course owes to the introduction of railways. Their effect, and further capabilities for developing the high agricultural resources of the county, were well noticed in a compact little volume called "Railways and Agriculture in Lincolnshire," by Mr. Samuel Sidney, published in 1848, and now out of print. The reclamation of the wolds and heaths was then in its early vigour, and has steadily advanced ever since. Independently of the railroads, still greater good has also arisen from the improved relation between landlord and tenant under Lord Yarborough, Mr. Chaplin, and the rest of the great landowners. The labourers, generally, are as fine, healthy, and contented a race as any of their class in England. As for the tenant farmers, hospitable, shrewd, and enterprising, it is their boast that Lincolnshire farming shall rival that of East Lothian, or they will know the reason why. A quaint story is told of Dr. Buckland's visit to Lord Yarborough. The doctor, who had been inspecting some of the finest wold-farms during the day, was present with his lordship at a tenant-farmer's dinner in the evening. Like all visitors, he had been greatly struck with the appearance of the men; and, in a pause of the conversation, propounded this solemn query-" My lord, where do you get such a fine set of tenants from?" To which a hale old specimen of the class called out in reply, "His lordship breeds 'em, doctor!" In its geological aspect, Lincolnshire presents no very remarkable features. The soil of its eastern coasts is an alluvium, flat and marshy, extending from the seaboard some distance inland, from Barton-on-Humber right down to the boundary line of Norfolk. From this rises on the west the line of downs or wolds, running north-west and south-east, from Barton to between Spilsby and Burgh-a distance of about eight-and-forty miles. Their breadth varies from five to thirteen miles. The formation is chalk, white and red. It slopes away below the marsh land on the east, and also for a narrow strip on the north; but on the west side, towards the interior, drops more abruptly, allowing the green sand The implements in use among these farms are of the to crop out, and skirt its escarpment nearly the whole improved make-iron ploughs and harrows; the culti-way from Barton to Burgh. Beyond, and west of the vator in regular use; the drill and horse-hoe universal. It has been estimated that Lincoln feeds 12,000,000 sheep, and pays £700,000 a-year for bones, oil, guano, and portable manures. Lincolnshire is a fox-hunting county; it boasts three packs of hounds-one of them, the Earl of Yarborough's, the oldest in the kingdom; another, Lord Henry Bentinck's, hunts the county six days a-week. The farmers all love a good horse, ride well to hounds, and intermediate not unfrequently between the York green sand, and running for the most part parallel with it, appears a narrow belt of iron-sand, disappearing here and there beneath clay. The wolds cease south of Spilsby and Burgh, where the fen passes from the coast inland. Partly parallel with the wolds, there extends from Aldborough and Winteringham on the north coast, and east of the Trent, to Grantham, Corby, and Bourne at the south extremity of the county, running nearly straight north and south, a low range of hills of the oolitic formation. There is a remarkable gap in the British town, the Romans established a first-class milichain at Lincoln, a mile or so in width, where the hills tary station; and one of the most perfect remaining of dip under the river Witham and its marshes. This range their roads, called the Ermine Street or Way, leads is not of great breadth. Like the wolds, it is steepest nearly due north along the range of hills, from Lincoln towards the west, where the lias makes its appearance. to Winteringham on the coast of the Humber. This Between these two ranges of high land lies a flat remarkable line of communication entered the county at valley, narrow at the top, or north, but widening very its south-west corner near the Witham, where it divided, much as it approaches the south-east. It is occupied one limb running due north by the east of Grantham to by the Oxford and Kimmeridge clays, until the Fen Lincoln, the other turning north-westerly towards Notbegins towards the south. The former, the Oxford tinghamshire. This latter half of its course is, however, clay, is in parts of this valley, as about Cambridge, of not so well defined as the upper. Both formed one enormous depth, and is estimated variously at from 500 road, which was originally constructed by the British; to 1,000 feet thick. Below Tattershall it becomes but the upper was adopted and probably improved by hidden beneath the Black-Fen, which spreads over pretty the Romans, as was also another aboriginal track called nearly the entire south-east of the county. Along this the Foss Way. The latter led from the north-eastern valley flow various sluggish rivers. A third of the sea-board to Lincoln, and thence into Nottinghamshire; way down, opposite Market Rasen, there is a slight rise but with the exception of a small portion by Lincoln, its in the formation, and the water-shed is from both sides course is obliterated. The Ermine Way is a splendid -the Ancholme river running from south to north into piece of engineering. It runs wide and straight for the Humber; and the Langworth, Bain, and others, half the length of the county; so that a traveller at Linrunning from north to south into the Witham. The coln bound for Winteringham, 30 miles off, and inquirWitham river crosses the valley, entering it at Lincoln ing his way, would be told to keep straight on and he by the dip in the hills, and running thence south-east could not miss it. to Boston. Besides these, an immense number of arti- Ancaster, Winteringham, Horncastle, Wainfleet, were ficial rivers, canals, dykes, eaus, lodes, cuts, becks, all Roman stations. At Torksey there was a Roman drains, &c., intersect the valley in all directions. The settlement, as also at Scampton. Roman coins, tessemore famous of these are the Car Dyke, a Roman work, lated pavements, weapons, altars, foundations, and other the North and South Forty-Foot Drains, and the Foss- remains, have been exhumed at these and many other Dyke. places. Formerly moist, cold and agueish, the climate of Lincolnshire is now, under a thorough system of drainage and cultivation, becoming dry, warm, and equal in salubrity to that of any county of England. To that, drainage we shall allude in our notice of the Fens, merely observing that the atmospherical conditions most suitable for the growth of corn, stock, and wool, are likewise the most beneficial to human life; and in proportion as Lincolnshire improves in respect of the one, she must do so equally in respect of the other. Lincolnshire has, since Saxon times, been divided, like Yorkshire and other counties, into several " 'parts." Three appear in the early records and chronicles, and are to some extent still recognised, viz. Lindsey, Holland, and Kesteven. The Isle of Axholme properly belongs to Yorkshire. Lindsey comprehends the northeastern portion of the county, having the wolds in its centre, whose elevated insular character probably gave the name, from the Saxon "ey" or island. Holland includes the fenny and marshy tract, central and southeast; Kesteven the south-west, enclosing the southern half of the chain of oolitic hills, and touching the boundary of Lindsey a little below Lincoln. Beyond these there were, anciently, also the subdivisions of wapentakes, sokes, and hundreds-the latter whereof, for certain parochial objects, is still preserved. Lincolnshire contains many memorials of the Roman conquest. It was included in the ring-fence of forts and stations, which the victorious cohorts of Cæsar erected round the Fen district; and had, besides, important inland positions. At Lincoln, where originally was a To the invasions of the Danes, in subsequent times, Lincolnshire owes the foundation of a large proportion of its towns-all those whose names end in "by" dating their baptism at least from this source and period. From these incursions of the Northmen, the monastic and ecclesiastical establishments, which were numerous, suffered very severely. During seven years, from 870 to 877, a series of inroads and ravages desolated the country. The monks assembled the villagers and rustics, and fought bravely in the open field; or shut themselves within their fortaliced churches and abbeys, handled arblast and trebuchet, and defended their consecrated strongholds with pious zeal. Victory, however, was on the side of the infidels, who destroyed or burnt most of the monasteries, among them Medehamsted (anciently Peterborough), Bardney, and Croyland Abbey, the earliest recorded settlement in the Fens, -massacred the monks, and finally conquered the entire district, which became an appanage to the Danish burghs of Stamford and Lincoln. Their conquests cost them dear, in the loss of three of their kings or vikings, who were buried at Threckingham; whence its name to this day. In early English history and the civil wars, Lincolnshire does not appear to have borne a very prominent part-the Isle of Axholme and the city of Lincoln being chiefly embroiled during the time of the first Henrys. At the suppression of the monasteries, rebellion broke out; but after great demonstrations, humbly subsided before legitimate power, Henry VIII., called the shire "one of the most brute and beestelie of the whole realme." During the general drainage the Lincolnshire men behaved somewhat better than the rest of the fen dwellers, neither greatly obstructing the operations of the engineers, nor destroying their works and implements. To be sure they were not much interfered with by the Earl of Bedford and his adventurers and undertakers; nor was the drainage of the Lincoln Fens entered on, as a whole, until later and more civilized days. Lincolnshire was the field, as the reader of course knows, of several of Cromwell's victories and reverses. Gainsborough, Ancaster, Grantham, Horncastle, and Lincoln, were all scenes of conflict. The city of Lincoln itself occupies a commanding site, as has been said, in and above a gap or pass in the western range of hills. Part of it is built in the valley, but the greatest part up and on the summit of the abrupt hill north of it. Through the gap, and past the skirts of the city, winds the river Witham; and a little higher up, through the same natural opening, pass the two railways which now serve Lincoln-the great Northern and the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln. Both of them cross the main street at right angles on the level, which has a remarkably odd effect. As the pedestrian comes down from the hill, he sees with surprise a huge engine and passenger-train, hitherto hidden by houses and buildings, roll slowly across the road between a pair of great white gates, which are then opened to let him He is hardly through before he beholds, a hundred yards or so lower down the street, a second pair of gates; and while he is wondering what they can be for, with a rush and a roar, and a long-drawn quivering scream, dashes past a swift express, and is gone like a fire-flaught on its distant errand. On the uppermost, the Great Northern, is built a noble hotel, out of whose coffee-room windows you might touch the passing train, and whose comfortable beds rock and tremble as the northern mails thunder by in the small-hours, waking you for the moment with their iron tread, and lulling you to sleep again with its departing murmur in the distance. pass. - this country, It has three lofty towers-the two on either flank of the western front being 180 feet high, and the vast central one at the intersection of the nave and transept 300 feet, including the pinnacles. Exteriorly, it has certainly more ornament than York Minster; but being of gray stone, it has not the lightness and cheerfulness of that beautiful fane. Along the upper division of the towers of the wall-faces of nave and aisles there is very elaborate ornament, as also on the doorways and façade of the western front. Unfortunately, not a very good view of the cathedral can be obtained from its best point, the north-west or south-west angle. On all sides, except the east, it is much crowded by buildings. The effect of the interior is utterly spoiled by a coating of hideous yellow wash. The shafts and arches, though lofty, look coarse, and the sharpness of the ornament is quite destroyed. The Galilee Court, the Lady Chapel, and the Chapter House are all good. Modern improvements have shut in the choir with solid screens and partitions, behind which the daily service is droned and muttered by a set of senile canons and slovenly choristers, who ought by just judgment to be deposed, every man of them. Around the cathedral are many fine old houses and walls, well worth careful examination. There are the ruins of the once superb Bishop's Palace; the remains of the ancient castle; the Roman wall, turrets, and gateway; the Chequer Gateway; the Lucy Tower; John of Gaunt's stables; the Newport Gate (Roman); and a host of other fragments. The ecclesiastical buildings are very rich in grotesque gurgoyles, corbels, and monsters. Direct north out of Lincoln runs the Ermine Way, already mentioned, which the traveller should also see. There are, besides the cathedral, twelve parish churches, all more or less worthy of a visit. They are mostly of Norman origin. The Guildhall, an ancient Gothic structure, is a beautiful structure. In its modern aspect, Lincoln is a pleasant place, quiet without being very dull. The traffic is not great, the manufactures nil. The trade is a good deal in flour with distant parts, and in ale with the surrounding neighbourhood, which supports four of five large breweries in the town. The distant view of Lincoln, crowned with those lofty solemn towers of its cathedral, from almost any side is very beautiful, but especially from the flats south-east or south-west, from which side it should be approached. Nearly opposite to it is a fine old gateway and well, and a handsome ancient church. The High Street runs right through the lower town, up the hill, to the cathedral. Ascending it we pass through the Stonebow Gate, a noble old relic of antiquity. From here the road becomes steeper, and the left-hand branch, leading up to the close, is as narrow, toilsome, and rugged as any path to heaven Bunyan's Pilgrim could have dreamed of. In it, nearly at the top, is the ancient Jews' quarter-a most curious locality, and one well From Lincoln our course now conducts us a southworth inspection. The houses are immensely old, and easterly direction to Boston, and our most convenient strangely built and ornamented. Arrived at the cathe-mode of travelling will be by the Great Northern Raildral, we stand on a lofty hill, thickly studded with way. The country through which the reader is again remains of early architecture, and facing the angle of conducted afford, perhaps, the most striking instances the magnificent west front of the cathedral. Here was known of the struggles of man with the world of waters formerly the Roman camp, whose lines included all the which have procured for this the name of ground now occupied by the cathedral and its close, and the ruined castle. The cathedral itself is a very noble building. Its exterior presents one of the richest specimens of early English architecture and ornamentation to be found in THE FEN DISTRICT. On the eastern coast of our island lies a district little known and less visited. Its history has been written, but remains unread, though it can scarcely be on account of sloping banks proclaim them the work of man ;-on where we turn off and leave them to pursue their unerring course to the sea, watching their long-drawn parallels converging in the distance; -on past roaring sluices, whose hollow thunder dies upon the ear as we hurry by; past mighty steam-engines labouring with heavy stroke and throb, and disgorging volumes of the dryness of the subject. In truth, however, the GREAT LEVEL OF THE FENS presents but few attractions to the modern tourist, who sweeps across it in the padded car at express speed, with his eyes resolvedly fixed on his newspaper. Yet, if he would but lift them up, there is an odd unwonted interest about the aspect of this district which, once felt, would keep them well employed. To many an eye it even has its beauty-water into the high-riding river from the swamp below; that true beauty which is found in utility-in the triumph of science and skill over natural disadvantages. Seen from the windows of the passing train, the landscape unrolls itself like a great moving panorama, bounded only by our limited vision. Now the line points through wide fields of corn, whose golden fruit is almost within reach of our hands; now rides over vast desolate pastures, where the cattle are galloping in ever-fresh terror at our approach. On past lonely farms, surrounded with mud walls, and looking cheerless even in the bright sunshine, and amidst their deep-green meadows;-on past isolated cottages, where the herdsman's wife is feeding her clamorous ducks, and the boys are digging ditches;-on past a hundred drains, whose black sides show what rich soil lies under the emerald turf; -on past broad, rushy commons, where donkeys and white flocks of geese are straying, and on whose further side the hamlet, with its little ancient church, lies basking in the sun;-on side by side with deep rushing rivers, whose straight and narrow channels and geometrically -on past rows of pollard willows, stunted and formal as the toy-trees of our childhood;-on past glittering meres, where the startled pike plunges away as he feels the jar of our iron wheels;-on past the dark morass, over which hangs a thin fog by day, and at night dances Will-o'-the-Wisp;-on past gray Gothic ruins, embosomed in trees, silent and venerable;-on past more drains, and dykes, and homesteads ;-on past yet profitless wastes, where heaps of tussock-grass and reeds are burning, and casting a dim smoke far and wide across the landscape;-on over quaky peat, soft clay, and gravel bed; past Ely's Isle, crowned with its sacred towers, and the high lands of March, and Peterborough's new-born commerce-on past Boston, with its noble church; Lincoln, on its heaven-kissing hill, and busy Market-Rasen ;-on where Tattershall Castle stands quaintly up from the flats, a beacon to the fenmen for many a mile round;-on by ripening crops and fertile meadows; over fenny wold and reedy pleck and plash;-on as the twilight gathers round the undulating moor; -on till the black night closes over us as we hear the dashing of the sea upon its northern shore. Such is the aspect of the Fen district, seen from its own level in its strange picturesqueness, with its drains, its farms, and embankments. From the hills which skirt it on the west, or landward side, it appears like an immense bay of land, chequered with alternate waste and cultivation, the higher grounds rising like green oases from the dark sooty soil. It is impossible not to feel conscious, in beholding it from this point of view, that the scene at our feet has unquestionably been the theatre of some great geological change-some mighty throe of those hidden powers that have tossed up the mountains, spread the plains, and divided the waters on the surface of this earthly ball. Such, indeed, has been the case. The Great Level of the Fens forms one of the most remarkable examples of alluvial action to be found upon the face of the earth. Under its title is included nearly the whole of Lincolnshire, the north half of Cambridgeshire, a great part of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Nottingham, and Suffolk. This wide district presents, from one end to the other, with little interval, a vast plain, in length about seventy miles, and in breadth in some places nearly forty, embracing upwards of 1060 square miles, or 680,000 acres. That part of the plain which borders on the sea is called marsh-land, in contradistinction to fen-land; the difference being that the surface soil of the marsh consists of a mixture of sand, mud, and clay, whereas that of fen proper is composed almost wholly of peat and bog. Both of these are, however, superficial; and in order to arrive at a clear idea of the actual origin and mode of formation of the district, it will be better to begin with the lower stratum. Premising that the entire soil of the Great Level is alluvial; that is to say, deposited by the action of water at successive periods, we find the lowest bed to be a muddy sand, or "silt," of considerable depth and firmness. This is, in all probability, what was the bottom of the great "bay." It is proved to be of marine origin by the quantity of sea-shells which it contains, and by its being deposited in layers, showing tidal action. In some places it would appear to have been driven by the force of the waves, or drifted by the winds into heaps, some of which must have been of great breadth and height, as they rise occasionally to the surface through the superincumbent strata. Next above this is a soft, blue, buttery clay, found almost universally beneath the fens. From its character, and the scarcity of marine and the abundance of river shells in its substance, this stratum is undoubtedly of freshwater origin. The tides, however, would appear to have overflowed it, as shells are found lying on its surface, and tongues of sand are found running up into it from the sea, which are evidently the "warped up" channels of ancient creeks, and abound with sea-shells and other marine remains. It varies in depth from two to twenty feet, and here and there crops out extensively above the peat, as in West Fen, near Boston. Above the clay, and forming the surface of the greater portion of the Level, lies the peat, overspreading the district like a black, crumbly crust. Trunks of trees and remains of plants abound in this stratum, which is composed chiefly of their decayed substance, mixed with sand and fresh-water sediment. The roots of the timber are generally found firmly bedded in the clay beneath, on which they anciently grew. Towards the sea a layer of loamy clay overlaps the peat, growing thicker seawards, and forming the surface of the marshland, which, outside the sea-wall, is finally covered with a muddy sand hidden by the tides at high-water. All these strata are of varying thicknesses, and it is rarely that a cut in any part of the district exhibits the whole series at once, though this is the case in the great drain called the Eau Brink Cut, near Lynn, whose sloping sides display sand, clay, peat, and loam, in the order of their successive deposition. Having thus ascertained the nature and composition of the soil of the Fens, we have to account, if we can, for its formation. We have said before, that the aspect of the district is that of a vast bay of the sea-the high ground skirting it on the west, and advancing towards north and south, having formed the shore. Adopting. then, this supposition, let us transport ourselves to the remote geological epoch when the tides washed the base of the chalk hills. The Great Level of the Fens lies before us as a vast shallow bay. The tides that slowly ripple over it are broken and twisted into innumerable creeks and channels by straggling sandbanks. Large rivers pour down from the uplands, whose waters, meeting the advancing ocean, loose more and more of their momentum as they hurry seawards. Shoals and mudbanks, of constantly increasing size, mark their several estuaries, gradually choking up with the ceaseless deposit which, where sea and river meet, is ever forming. An age is past, and the bottom of the bay, by the low up-heaving might of subterraneous fire, has risen several feet above its former level: the rivers, that once poured swiftly from the hills into the bay at their feet, debouch now upon a wide muddy plain, over which their waters wander sluggishly; here standing in pools and wide shallow plashes, there struggling through crooked channels to the sea, and depositing everywhere the earthy sediment and clay gathered from the uplands of their birth. Occasionally a higher tide than usual, as if the ocean were striving to recover its lost domain, sweeps almost up to its ancient bounds, and leaves in shells, sea-weed, and drifted sand, the marks of its resistless advance. Moreover, as its waves drain off, long winding creeks are formed in the soft ground, up which for a while succeeding tides can penetrate; but leaving their deposit of sand as they ebb away, they gradually raise barriers to their own advance, and—the platform still slowly rising-in a short time the advantage won is lost, never to be recovered. View we the scene at a yet later age. The plain has risen higher still; the rivers are confined within their banks; the freshes have run off, save from a few meres |