April 11th.--This morning we took a carriage and two horses, and set out
for
BOLTON PRIORY,
a distance of about six miles. The morning was cool, with breezy clouds,
intermingled with sunshine, and, on the whole, as good as are nine tenths
of English mornings. J----- sat beside the driver, and S----- and I in
the carriage, all closed but one window. As we drove through Skipton,
the little town had a livelier aspect than yesterday when it wore its
Good Friday's solemnity; but now its market-place was thronged,
principally with butchers, displaying their meat under little movable
pent-houses, and their customers. The English people really like to
think and talk of butcher's meat, and gaze at it with delight; and they
crowd through the avenues of the market-houses and stand enraptured round
a dead ox.
We passed along by the castle wall, and noticed the escutcheon of the
Cliffords or the Thanets carved in stone over the portal, with the motto
Desormais, the application of which I do not well see; these ancestral
devices usually referring more to the past, than to the future. There is
a large old church, just at the extremity of the village, and just below
the castle, on the slope of the hill.
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