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The glorious churches of Cirencester, Northleach, Burford, and Bibury, and the ancient manor houses scattered throughout the Cotswolds are fitting monuments to the men who laboured to erect them. Would that space allowed a detailed account of all these old manor houses!

William III. slept that night at the priory. The famous "Nimrod," in his "Life of a Sportsman," gives us a picture, by Alken, of Bibury racecourse, and tells us how gay Burford was a hundred years ago: "Those were Bibury's very best days.

Hall-Walker has been constant in her devotion to this variety for several years, and she possesses a very fine team in Champions Dainty Boy, Dainty Belle, Bibury Belle, and in Gateacre Sable Sue. Mrs. Vale Nicolas also has recently been most successful with shaded sables. Ch. Nanky Po, over 8 lb., and Champions Sable Mite and Atom bear witness to this statement.

Peregrine told me the other day that during the race week the shopkeepers at Bibury village used to let their bedrooms to the visitors, and sleep on the shop board, while the rest of the family slept underneath the counter. Ah well! Tempora mutantur! "Nimrod" and his "notables" are all gone. "The knights' bones are dust, And their good swords rust, Their souls are with the saints, I trust."

Probably within a hundred yards of Bibury spring there are beautiful hidden caves, such as those funny little "palaeolithic" men lived in a few thousand years ago; but why there have not been more discoveries of this nature in this part of the Cotswolds it is difficult to say. There is a cave hereabouts, men say, but the entrance to it cannot now be found.

His first appearance was made in the Twenty-fourth Stockbridge Biennial at the Bibury Club Meeting, when he won easily enough; but there were only four moderate animals behind him. A walk-over for the Troy Stakes followed, and then Macheath beat him easily enough for the Hurstbourne Stakes, though he finished in front of Adriana and Tyndrum.

It was in the year 1681 that the Newmarket spring meeting was transferred to Bibury. Parliament was then sitting at Oxford, some thirty miles away; so that the new rendezvous was more convenient than the old. Nell Gwynne accompanied the king to the course. For a hundred and fifty years the Bibury club held its meetings here.

We now leave Bibury behind us, and a mile on we pass through the hamlet of Ablington, which is very like Bibury on a smaller scale, with its ancient cottages, tithe barns and manor house; its springs of transparent water, its brook, and wealth of fine old trees. We have no time to linger in this hamlet to-day, though we would fain pause to admire the old house.