They
were about twenty men-at-arms on horseback, with lances and banners. We
were a little too near for the full enjoyment of the spectacle; for,
though some of the armor was real, I could not help observing that other
suits were made of silver paper or gold tinsel. A policeman (a queer
anomaly in reference to such a mediaeval spectacle) told us that they
were going to joust and run at the ring, in a field a little beyond the
bridge.
TO NOTTINGHAM.
May 28th.--We left Peterborough this afternoon, and, however reluctant to
leave the cathedral, we were glad to get away from the hotel; for, though
outwardly pretentious, it is a wretched and uncomfortable place, with
scanty table, poor attendance, and enormous charges. The first stage of
our journey to-day was to Grantham, through a country the greater part of
which was as level as the Lincolnshire landscapes have been, throughout
our experience of them. We saw several old villages, gathered round
their several churches; and one of these little communities, "Little
Byforth," had a very primitive appearance,--a group of twenty or thirty
dwellings of stone and thatch, without a house among them that could be
so modern as a hundred years. It is a little wearisome to think of
people living from century to century in the same spot, going in and out
of the same doors, cultivating the same fields, meeting the same faces,
and marrying one another over and over again; and going to the same
church, and lying down in the same churchyard,--to appear again, and go
through the same monotonous round in the next generation.
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