ster, Massachusetts, for the founding of which
town John White, the rector of Holy Trinity, was mainly responsible.

[Illustration: NAPPER'S MITE.]

The County Museum, close to St. Peter's Church, should on no account
be missed. Here is stored a most interesting collection of British and
Roman antiquities found in and around Dorchester, and also of fossils
from the Dorset coast and elsewhere, together with many out-of-the-way
curiosities. "Napper's Mite" is the name given to the old almshouse in
South 1615 with money left for the Robert Napper. It has a queer open
gallery or stone verandah along the street front. Next door to it is
the Grammar School, which owes its inception to the Thomas Hardy who
is commemorated in St. Peter's, and whose benefactions to the town
were many and great. Of equal interest, perhaps, is a house on the
other side of the street that was once a school kept by William
Barnes, surely the most serene and kindly schoolmaster that ever
taught unruly youth. Barnes, in addition to his other literary work,
was secretary of the Dorset Museum, but his incumbency at Whitcombe
and the small addition to his income obtained in other ways did not
amount altogether to a "living" and he was forced to take up schooling
to make both ends meet. The poems were never a financial success,
though they always received a chorus of praise and appreciation and
led many literary lions to meet the author. After years full of sordid
cares Barnes was granted a civil list pension and the rectory of Came.
Here, in the midst of the peasantry he loved so well, this gentle
spirit passed away in 1886.

The lodging occupied by Judge Jeffreys during the Monmouth Rebellion
trials or "Bloody Assize" (1685), when seventy-four were sentenced to
death on Gallows Hill of dreadful memory, and 175 to transportation to
carry westward with them the bitter seeds that bore glorious fruit a
century later, was in a house still standing nearly opposite the
museum. This almost brings the list of historical buildings in
Dorchester to a close. The County Hall, Town Hall and Corn Exchange,
all unpretentious and quietly dignified, represent both shire and
town. The few buildings left by the seventeenth-century fire seem to
have included a highly picturesque group near the old Pump (now marked
by an obelisk) and at the commencement of High East Street, where a
dwelling-house went right across the highway. This was pulled down by
a corporation filled