use standing there. Here, for the sake of auld lang
syne, it gets a bright new coat of paint now and again, and worthily
holds its own as the last relic of a famous old inn, around which so
much of the public life of the town and neighbourhood had revolved for
some generations!

The Bull was originally the "Black Bull," and the Boar's Head the "Blue
Boar's Head." The Bull had stabling for a hundred horses. The Green
Man was a sign that explained itself when, at the beginning of the
century and for some years afterwards, upon an angular sign on the
front of the inn, with faces two ways, was the painted figure of a man
in the green habit of the archer and forester. The "Jolly Butchers" or
"Ye three Butchers," on the Market Hill, and the "Catherine Wheel," in
Melbourn Street, have ceased to be inns.

Such was the outward shell of Royston in the hectic flush of the "good
old times." The taking of the census recently suggests a word with
regard to the population of the town and how it was ascertained in
times gone by. At least, at one decade (1821) the Overseers were paid
a penny per head for taking the population. In 1801 the population was
only 1484, and in 1831 it was 2008. Further particulars of the
population of the town and of the villages in the neighbourhood will be
found in an appendix at the end of this book.

{117}

CHAPTER XII.

PUBLIC WORSHIP AND EDUCATION--MORALS AND MUSIC.

When the reforming spirit which brooded over the two centuries touched
the subject of education, its advocates became enthusiastic! Here is
what an old writer said in 1806 about a proposal to establish evening
schools for the instruction of farm servants:--

"We should hear the humble countryman talk of the heroes of old, catch
the patriotic inspiration from the action of his great forefathers,
while wisdom would extend her protecting hand and claim the nation for
her own"!

However much we may be inclined to smile at this grandiloquent prophecy
of the fruits of an evening school, in the light of present
difficulties of instilling four standards into the bulk of the
childhood of the nation, it is impossible to move a step among the
footprints of the common people of sixty years ago without finding how
enormously the progress of education has transformed the face of
society, though not quite on the classic lines of the old writer just
quoted.

Of education for children in the villages there was none at the
beginni