Will any artist reader, in search of a fresh subject and new ground, take the hint, I wonder?
Not far from the inn we noticed a bronze statue, set as usual upon a stone pedestal of the prevailing type, reminding us of the numerous statues of a like kind that help so successfully to disfigure our London streets. I must say that this statue had a very latter-day look, little in accord with the unpretentious old-world buildings that surrounded it. Bronze under the English climate assumes a dismal, dirty, greeny-browny-gray—a most depressing colour. At the foot of the statue was an anchor. Who was this man, and what great wrong had he done, we wondered, to be memorialised thus? So we went to see, and on the pedestal we read—
Sir John Franklin
Discoverer of the North West Passage
Born at Spilsby
April 1786.
Died in the Arctic Regions
June 1847.
After this we visited the church, here let me honestly confess, not for the sake of worship or curiosity, but for a moment's restful quiet. The inn was uncomfortably crowded, a farmers' "Ordinary" was being held there. The roadways of the town were thronged; there were stalls erected in the market square from which noisy vendors gave forth torrents of eloquence upon the virtues of the goods they had to sell,—especially eloquent and strong of voice was a certain seller of spectacles, but he was hard pressed in these respects by the agent of some
