But if the inns be quaint, how shall justice be done to the quaintness of the mediÆval timbered houses in the High Street, or Butcher Row? There is no town in England—no, not even Chester—that can show a greater number, or more beautiful examples of black and white; while for queer street names Shrewsbury certainly bears away the bell. There are Wyle Cop, and the houses at its foot, once known as “under the Wyle”; Pride Hill, which does not refer to the almost Spanish pride of Salopians, but to an old mansion of the Pride family that once stood there; Shoplatch; Murivance, on the old town walls; Mardol, or “Dairy Fold”; and Dog-pole, originally “Duck-pool.” In midst of all these is the Market-square, with the old red sandstone Market-house in the centre; a place notable in these days rather for a pleasant and aristocratic quiet than for anything connected with marketing. The old trading interest went in 1809, when the new Market buildings and Corn Exchange—a not altogether successful combination of red and yellow brick—were opened. A curious inscription on the front of the old building dates it back to Queen Elizabeth’s time, and above, in a recess, stands the effigy of that Richard, Duke of York, whose head graced one of York’s gates in 1460, after the Battle of Wakefield. The effigy was brought from the old gatehouse on the Welsh Bridge, demolished in 1791. Armoured from heel to crown, it reminds one vividly of those feudal Daimios of Japan whom it was imperative to sweep away before that country could emerge from barbarism and savagery. And let it not be forgotten that our “chivalry” of old was as savage and as barbarous as anything to be found in China or any other Asiatic country.

A warrior of unflinching resolve and proud belief in self was Clive, one of Shropshire’s greatest sons, whose bronze statue, its pedestal simply inscribed with his name, stands in advance of the Market-house. It was well merely to place his name there, for what do Shropshiremen need to be told of Clive? That would be an ill day when they should forget his youth, his manhood, his achievements, and his tragedy. To serve your country—to give her Empire, trade, and wealth—these things do not fall to the lot of many men, and it is well they should not, for they bring the curses and the rabid enmity of the factious, the deprecation of the feeble-hearted, and the vitriolic hatred of the envious and the mean-souled; ever the loudest voiced among the body politic. Few are those who, unmoved, could be the recipients of such base slander and ingratitude, and Clive was not one of them. The man who gave us India died by his own hand, but none the less done to death by the Little Englanders of that day.

The dedications of Shrewsbury’s churches are as unusual as the names of its streets. There are St. Chad’s, St. Alkmund’s, and St. Julian’s, among others; but the finest church of all is St. Mary’s, whose spire, soaring to a height of 220 feet, is oddly at variance with the tower and the rest of the building, being of white stone, while the body of the church is in red. St. Mary’s spire is visible from great distances. It tempted a steeple-jack named Cadman to a fearful death in 1739. He had been repairing the spire, and, having completed the work, was foolish enough to essay the feat of sliding down a rope fastened to the spire at one end, and at the other to an oak tree across the Severn. The rope broke, and he was flung from mid-air into the street of St. Mary Fryars, being instantly killed. A curious epitaph to him remains:—

St. Mary’s is largely Norman, and very, very beautiful. St. Chad’s, on the other hand, built a hundred years ago, is Greek of sorts and designed in a perfect circle; the model of a heathen temple, and the worst of bad taste. But there is this satisfaction; it is not in an obtrusive position, and unless it be diligently sought is not likely to be found.

The Castle, on the other hand, is the first thing seen by the railway traveller from London, just as it was the least likely in coaching days. When the Psalmist sings of the valleys being exalted and the mountains laid low, he parallels the changes wrought at Shrewsbury by the railway, for the traffic that came in by Wyle Cop has been wholly transferred to another line of route, where the Castle is the most prominent object. If there were ever one who, alighting at Shrewsbury station and, entering the station-yard, failed to see the Castle, he surely would be blind to the light of day, for the frowning battlements that even now glower down from their craggy foothold, after eight hundred years, overhang very dramatically the cabs and carriages, the portmanteaus and Gladstone bags of modern life. The keep is all that is left of the original Norman stronghold. The outworks have disappeared these hundreds of years past, and the walls of the keep itself have been patched and re-faced. Impressive still is that ancient fortress in sunshine, but infinitely grand when the sun is setting, the lights of the station begin to twinkle, and the signal-lamps to gleam green and red. Then those ponderous turrets and ruddy walls take on a silhouetted blackness that effectually hides the innovations and the modern touches only too visible in the broad eye of day.

Shrewsbury School is as prominent as the Castle itself, on the way up into the town; a school no longer since modern buildings have been raised on the other side of the Severn. Now used as a Public Library and Museum, and with a seated bronze statue of Darwin, its last famous scholar, in front, it fitly enshrines within its noble Tudor walls many records of Shrewsbury’s and Shropshire’s past.

One thing, certainly, the visitor to Shrewsbury cannot, nay, must not, fail of doing. He must not neglect the delicacy peculiar to the town—

as Ingoldsby has it in his “Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie.” Only Pailin no longer makes Shrewsbury cakes. He has long been gathered to his fathers, and let us hope he is quiring with the celestial throng. But, if Pailin be dead, the making of the especial cakes goes on unfailingly, and the eating of them is a rite—a canonical observance almost.

Over against the shop where the original Pailin earned his undying fame—why has Shrewsbury no statue to him?—is the courtyard that gives access to that wonderfully beautiful timbered building, the Council House, the spot where, in bygone days, the Council of the Marches governed the Principality of Wales and these marchlands. “Lords’ Place” they sometimes name this vice-regal court.

A great feature of Shrewsbury is the Quarry. Now the Quarry is not a quarry at all, but a public park beside the Severn, in whose beautiful grounds is probably the largest and most beautiful avenue of limes in the kingdom; and amidst those noble trees there stands a stone effigy of Hercules, covered over with the green stains of weather until he looks quite the most horrid Hercules the explorer is likely to discover anywhere. Also, his muscles are things of a weird and wonderful fascination, more resembling subcutaneous apple dumplings than mere representations of gristle and sinew. Who is there that lives within a circle of fifty miles from Shrewsbury and has not heard of the Quarry and its flower shows? Do not the railway companies run excursions especially for those who flock there? What Shrewsbury would do without its Quarry it is difficult to imagine, and scarce anything more disastrous could be thought of than that it should ever be improved away; for the town is so placed upon its almost island site that the houses huddle closely up to one another in most directions, and this is one of the very few clear spaces within the circlet that the Severn makes.