A WALK
THROUGH
_LEICESTER_.
To the traveller who may wish to visit whatever is deemed most worthy of
notice in the town of Leicester, the following sketch is devoted. And as
the highly cultivated state of topographical knowledge renders
superficial remark unpardonable in local description, we shall endeavor
to produce, at the various objects of our visit, such information and
reflections as a conductor, not wholly uninformed, may be expected to
offer to the curious and intelligent, while he guides him through 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 RATAE,
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