VII

  The owner of this blest domain
  Himself to sojourn here is fain;
  And if by land or sea he roam
  Yet loveth best his native home,
  Which, for two centuries or near,
  His ancestors have held so dear.

  VIII

  Admire well the graceful art
  Of Nature’s hand in every part: 
  Full well he knoweth how to prize
  This fair Terrestrial Paradise;
  And ’tis his wish sincere and true
  That others should enjoy it too.

But to return to the High Cross and the Watling Street.  The description on the Cross was in Latin, of which the following is a translation: 

The noblemen and gentry, ornaments of the counties of Warwickshire and Leicestershire at the instance of the Right Honourable Basil Earl of Denbigh, have caused this pillar to be erected in grateful as well as perpetual remembrance of peace at last restored by her Majesty Queen Anne.  If, Traveller, you search for the footsteps of the ancient Romans you may here behold them.  For here their most celebrated ways crossing one another extend to the utmost boundaries of Britain.  Here the Bennones kept their quarters and at the distance of one mile from here Claudius, a certain commander of a Cohort, seems to have had a camp towards the Street, and towards the Fosse a tomb.

We were pleased to see that the remains of the Cross had been enclosed in the garden of a house belonging to the Earl of Denbigh, a descendant of the Earl who had been instrumental in building it, and it was now comparatively safe from further defacement.

The Romans built stations along their roads, and near the High Cross stood their military station Bennones, on the side of which many Roman remains, including a Roman urn, had been discovered.  It was of great importance to them that any hostile movement amongst the turbulent Britons should be reported immediately, so young men who were quick runners were employed to convey intelligence from one station to another; but this system was improved upon later by building on the side of the road, in as prominent a position as possible, at intervals of five or six miles, a house where forty horses were stabled so that news or soldiers could, if required, be carried by relays of horses a distance of a hundred miles along the road in the course of a single day.  We were now only about twelve miles from Leicester, and we had to walk about six miles in that county in order to reach Lutterworth, famous throughout England as the parish where the great Reformer John Wiclif spent the last nineteen years of his life as rector.  We passed through a fine grazing and fox-hunting country on our way, and found Lutterworth a rather pleasantly situated little town.  Our first visit was naturally to the church, and as we walked along the quiet street leading up to it we saw a woman standing at her cottage door, to whom we spoke concerning the great divine,