resented, together with taverns, eating-houses, and in
later years playhouses of various descriptions. In the eighteenth
century one hundred thousand pounds' worth of woollen manufactures was
sold in a week in one row alone. A thousand pack-horses were used to
convey the goods of the Lancashire merchants to this famous fair. Now
railways have supplanted the pack-horses; fairs have had their day; the
trade of the country can now be carried on without them; and their
relics with their shows and shooting-galleries and steam roundabouts
have become a nuisance.

The peaceful life of the villagers was sometimes disturbed by the
sounds and sights of conflict. The exciting tales of war are connected
with the history of many an English village, and many "little
Wilhelmines" and labouring "grandsires" have discovered "something
large and round," traces of these ancient conflicts and "famous
victories."

"For often when they go to plough
The ploughshare turns them out,
'And many thousand men,' quoth he,
'Were slain in that great victory.'"

Many a lance and sword, and gilt spur, beautifully enamelled, which
once decked the heel of a noble knight, have been found in our fields,
and remind us of those battles which were fought so long ago.

"The knights are dust,
Their good swords rust,
Their souls are with the saints, we trust."

Sometimes the spectres of armed knights and warriors are supposed to
haunt these scenes of ancient slaughter, and popular superstition has
handed down the memory of the battles which were fought so long ago. It
tells us of the mythical records of the fights of King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table by the banks of the River Douglas, which ran
with blood for three days, so terrible was the slaughter. It tells us
how stubbornly the Britons resisted the Roman armies, so that on one
occasion not one Briton was left to tell the tale of their defeat.

When we visit the site of some battle with the history book in our hand,
it is possible to imagine the lonely hillside peopled again with the
dense ranks of English archers, or hear the clanging of the armour as
the men-at-arms charged for "St. George and merry England"; and the air
will be full again of the battle-cries, of the groans of the wounded and
the shouts of the victors.

Visit the scene of the battle of Hastings. Here on the high ground,
flanked by a wood, stood the brave English, under the leadership of
Haro