a large, commercial, and, we trust, a respectable town; the capital of a province which can honestly boast, that by its rich pasturage, its flocks and herds, it supplies England with the blessings of agricultural fertility; and by the industry of its frame-work-knitters, affords an article that quickens and extends the operations of commerce.
We now request our good-humoured stranger to accept of such our guidance; whether he be the tourist, whose object of inquiry is general information—or the man of reflection, who, wherever he goes, whether in crouded towns or solitary fields, finds something to engage his meditation—or the mercantile rider, who, when the business of his commissions is transacted, quits his lonely parlour for a stroll through the streets—we shall endeavor to bring before his eye as much of interest as our scenes
will afford: and as for the diligent antiquary, we assure him we will make the most of our Roman remains; and we hope he will not quarrel with the rough forest stones of our streets, when we promise him they shall conduct him to the smoother pavement of Roman mosaic.
What may have been the name of the town we are about to traverse, before the establishment of the Romans, cannot be ascertained; for the Britons had no written monuments, and it cannot be expected that tradition should have survived the revolutions, which, since that period, have taken place in this island. King Leir, and whatever surmises may have been founded on the similarity between his name and the present name of the place, may safely be left to those who are more fond of the flights of conjecture than the solid arguments of truth.
After the establishment of the Romans, Leicester became one of their most important stations; was known, we are well assured, by the name of Ratæ, and was a colony, composed of 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