he wearied traveller, and
many persons of family, tho' of broken fortunes were honorably maintained
at their board. The poor were gratuitously relieved from their kitchens,
and that in a manner, upon the whole, more favorable to religion and
morality than they are now by those parish rates, which the abolition of
monasteries, and the partition of their property among private
individuals, have rendered so oppressively necessary. To these valuable
purposes the revenues of our Abbey were fully competent, for it possessed
the advowsons of thirty six parish churches in Leicester and its County,
which together with lands in various places, and rights in particular
districts, produced annually for its disposal more than one thousand
pounds.

Quitting the Abbey meadow, and passing the North lock, we still continue
our walk along pleasing rural scenes. The sweeps of the river which here
beautifully meanders, wash, almost closely, a large extent of town,
affording an agreeable prospect on the left, and a slope finely
diversified with groves and pasturage descends gently to the meadows on
the right. Approaching the Bow-Bridge, we pass a plot of ground
insulated by the Soar, called the Black Friars, once the scite of a
monastery belonging to the Augustine or Black Friars, of which no traces
now remain. That arm of the river which flows under the west bridge, is
by some supposed, from its passing under the scite of the old Roman town,
to be a canal formed by that people for the convenience of their
dwellings. It is now called the _New Soar_, and whether it can
authentically boast the honor of being a Roman work, the antiquary may
perhaps endeavour in vain to decide. A tunnel or Roman sewer, was
discovered in 1793, at an equal distance between the Roman ruin, called
Jewry Wall, and the river, and in a direct line towards the latter, which
contained some curious fragments of Roman pottery.

Tho' it be the leading purpose of this survey to point out existing
objects, those who lament the loss of such antient remains as were justly
to be prized, will pardon a brief tribute to the memory of _Bow-Bridge_.
That single arch of stone, richly shadowed with ivy, spanned, at the
corner of this island, the arm of the Soar. Its beautiful curve,
unbroken either by parapet or hand-rail, well merited the name with which
some Antiquaries have graced it, the _Rialto Bridge_. On the top of the
bow, feeding on the mould which time had accumula