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184
Walks in the Black Country

seen world larger than any catacombs we read of. Some of these barrows must be full sixty feet in height and a quarter of a mile in length. Should this volume go to another edition perhaps it will present a photograph of a section of these little black mountains sent up to the surface and planted in thick-set rows over it by the coal and iron miners of the district.

We left the train at Wellington, the station nearest to the Wrekin. I never knew before which of the Wellingtons the great English field-marshal associated to his title. I had always thought it must have been the Somersetshire Wellington; but, on seeing this Shropshire town and Oaken Gates, I am persuaded his title should have been taken here if it were not. No locality could have more appropriately given him the name of "Iron Duke." Wellington is a considerable town, built in the old English fashion, as if to make the utmost of its space. This in early times was a pressing necessity when a town was built and walled for defence as well as for commercial and social life. But this habit became a second nature to the town-builders of old when the villages were sparsely scattered over the country, and there was all the space they could covet for wide streets and deep door-yards. Even on such sites they built as if closely compressed within relentless walls. Wellington has much of