Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/420

406 Between Coventry and Warwick, in a green, quiet, rural district, stands Kenilworth. And Kenilworth is a castle, which absorbs into itself all of space, population, and history that belongs to the name. Not only novel readers but practical history readers at a distance, never think of anything but the castle when the name is mentioned or suggested. Still, there is a goodly, tidy, and comfortable village near the ruins worth visiting without the lion which attracts so many thousands a year to pay their homage and their admiration—to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. All the ordinary trades of a practical business community are carried on in this village; and a tall, taper chimney of a tannery, as high as any church steeple, smokes its pipe in the face of all the romantic antiquities of the place. Still, the people would probably confess that the principal source of their income is derived from their vested interest in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth," not in the real castle walls. Take away that famous novel, and, with all the authenticated history that remains attached to them, not one in five of the visitors they now attract would walk around them with admiration. In fact they are more a monument to the genius of the great novelist than to the memory of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester. If any community ever owed a statue to the honour of a benefactor for money