ans of
gratifying them by the talents of several performers of the first rate
excellence. The popular pieces of the London stage, are here every
season represented in a manner pleasing to the town and honorable to the
manager.

Proceeding thro' a street which now only nominally retains a trace of the
monkish establishments that formerly occupied its ground, being called
Friar Lane, we observe a charity school, for 35 boys and 30 girls,
erected 1791, belonging to the parish of St. Martin. At the farther and
less handsome end of this street is the Meeting House of the General
Baptists. Passing down the New Street, part of the scite of the
monastery of the Grey Friars, we arrive at

ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH,

At what period after the demolition of Leicester in the reign of Henry
the second, the church of St. Martin, antiently St. Crosse, was rebuilt,
cannot be accurately stated. The chancel, which is the property of the
king, rented by the vicar, and was erected after the main fabrick, is
ascertained to been have built in the reign of Henry the fifth, at the
expense of 34l. And as the addition of spires to sacred edifices was not
introduced into England from the east till the beginning of the reign of
Henry the third, the date must be fixed between the two intervening
centuries, and if the spire was built with the church not very early
after the introduction of that ornament of our churches, as the handsome,
solid form of St. Martin's bespeaks considerable practice and expertness
in the art.

The church originally consisted only of a nave and two aisles; the south
aisle, where the consistory court is held, which is formed by a range of
gothic arches whose clustered columns unite strength with lightness, was
added after the erection of the others. In contemplating the inside of
this church, it is curious to draw a brief parallel between its present
plain yet handsome appearance, and its catholic magnificence before the
zeal of the reformation, justly excited, but intemperate in its
direction, had, during its career against Romish absurdities destroyed
almost every trace of ornament in our churches. And whilst we survey its
present few decorations, its brass chandeliers depending from the elegant
cieling of the nave, the beautiful oak corinthian pillars of its altar
piece, which is ornamented with a picture of the ascension by Francesco
Vanni, (the gift of Sir W. Skeffington Bart.) and its excellent organ, we
ca