the soldiers from the legions, having
magistrates, manners, and language the same as Rome itself. Under the
Saxon dynasty it obtained the name of LEICESTER, compounded of _castrum_,
or _cester_, from its having been a Roman military station, and _leag_,
or _lea_, a pasture surrounded by woods, for such was antiently the scite
of the town. This name it has preserved, with less alteration in the
mode of spelling than almost any other town in the kingdom, through the
barbarous reigns of the Saxon kings, the oppressive system of the feudal
times, the dark gloom of monkish superstition, and the fatal revolutions
occasioned by the civil commotions of later ages.

Such is, most probably, the true etymology of the name of the place we
are now proceeding to survey; for which purpose we will suppose the
visitor to set forward from the Three Crowns Inn, along a strait wide
street, called

GALLOWTREE-GATE,

(corruptly pronounced _Goltre_), from its having formerly led to the
place of execution, the left side of which is the scite of the antient
city walls.

At the bottom of this street, a building, formerly the assembly-room, but
now converted to purposes of trade, with a piazza, under which is a
machine for weighing coals, forms the centre of five considerable
streets. The

HUMBERSTONE-GATE,

on the right, leads to a range of new and handsome dwellings, called
SPA-PLACE, from a chalybeate spring found there, which, though furnished
by the proprietor with neat marble baths and every convenient appendage
for bathing, has not been found sufficiently impregnated with mineral
properties to bring it into use. The Humberstone-Gate is out of the
local limits of the borough, and subject to the concurrent jurisdiction
of the county and borough magistrates; though in the reigns of Edward VI.
and Elizabeth, attempts were made to bring it exclusively under the
magisterial power of the town. It is part of the manor possessed by the
Bishops of Lincoln, in the twelfth century, and is still called the
_Bishops' Fee_.

Southward from the Humberstone-Gate to the Goltre-Gate, very considerable
additions, consisting of several streets, have lately been made to the
town.

Advancing forward, the visitor, on passing the weighing machine, enters
the

BELGRAVE-GATE,

a street of considerable extent, in the broader part of which stands what
may justly be deemed one of the most valuable curiosities of the place;
it is a