tful and unspoilt reminders of another age.

The fine and spacious High Street that once echoed with the horns of a
dozen coaches in the course of an afternoon now hums with the
machinery of half a hundred motors in an hour, and if they do not all
stop, some do, and leave the worthy burgesses a greater amount of
wealth and a cleaner roadway than their more picturesque predecessors.

The municipality is very ancient and still retains some quaint
customs. Not that, however, of the medieval fee for admission to the
corporation consisting of two greyhounds, two white capons, and a
white bull! The last item must have given the aspirant for civic
honour much wearisome searching of farmyards before he found the
acceptable colour. Like so many of the old towns through which we have
wandered, Marlborough has suffered from fire; one in the middle of the
seventeenth century was of particular fury, for, with the exception of
the beautiful old gabled houses on the higher side of the sloping main
street, the town was then practically destroyed. "Two hundred and
fifty dwellings and Saint Mary's church are gone, and over three
hundred families forced to crave the hospitality of the neighbouring
farmers and gentry, or wander about the fields vainly looking for
shelter. Every barn and beast-house filled to overflowing."

The tradesmen of High Street say that theirs is the widest street in
England. This may be so. It is undoubtedly one of the most pleasant
and picturesque, and "the great houses supported on pillars," to which
Pepys refers in his Diary, still remain on the north side.

Marlborough had not actually a Roman beginning. The station known as
Cunetio was nearly three miles away to the east. But the castle hill
antedates this period considerably and is supposed to be an artificial
mound of unknown antiquity, perhaps made by the men who reared Silbury
Hill. It is said that within lie the bones of Merlin. Quite possibly
this idea arose from the resemblance of the ancient form of
Marlborough--"Merlebergh" to the name of the half legendary sorcerer.
The real origin of the town-name is supposed to be the West Saxon
"Maer-leah" or cattle boundary. Here was erected in the earlier years
of the Conqueror's reign a castle that was strengthened and rebuilt in
succeeding generations until, somewhere about the rise of the Tudor
power, it was allowed to fall into decay. It was probably in the
Castle Chapel of St. Nicholas that King John was