Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/334

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Walks in the Black Country

idea current at the time, I am unable to decide. Of course the XX did not mean a familiar brand of ale, of which a barrel was offered to warp the loyalty of any of Charles's liege subjects. Indeed, it is doubtful if that ale brand were known in his day. There is another monument, the statue of a full-sized knight standing on a pedestal, which bears a full description of his virtues. It is that of Admiral Levison, who served against the Spanish under Elizabeth, and achieved feats deeply recorded in brass. If one could not read the Latin inscription, he might take the statue for that of Shakespeare. In form and face the resemblance is quite striking.

Few churches in England are more impressive in their exterior and interior aspects than St. Mary's of Wolverhampton. It does not compare with Tong Church for monumental wealth and grandeur; but its massive wails and tower, and its history, reaching back into the misty blue and romance of Saxon times, make it an object of peculiar interest. When one, especially an American, or the citizen of a young nation, visits such edifices, and walks up and down with chastened step their dim-lighted aisles, a spray of thoughts comes flashing to his mind, like the tinted beams of light that come to his feet through the stained windows. Something more than half-a-dozen centuries is looking down upon