ST. ALBANS.

The railway running from London to Edinburgh, and on which the celebrated fast train the “Flying Scotchman” travels between the two capitals, is the longest in Britain. Its route northward from the metropolis to the Scottish border, with occasional digressions, will furnish many places of interest. On the outskirts of London, in the north-western suburbs, is the well-known school founded three hundred years ago by John Lyon at Harrow, standing on a hill two hundred feet high. One of the most interesting towns north of London, for its historical associations and antiquarian remains, is St. Albans in Hertfordshire. Here, on the opposite slopes of a shelving valley, are seen on the one hand the town that has clustered around the ancient abbey of St. Albans, and on the other the ruins of the fortification of Verulam, both relics of Roman power and magnificence. On this spot stood the chief town of the Cassii, whose king, Cassivelaunus, vainly opposed the inroads of Cæsar. Here the victorious Roman, after crossing the Thames, besieged and finally overthrew the Britons. The traces of the ancient earthworks are still plainly seen on the banks of the little river Ver, and when the Romans got possession there arose the flourishing town of Verulam, which existed until the British warrior-queen. Boadicea, stung by the oppressions of her race, stormed and captured the place and ruthlessly massacred its people. But her triumph was short lived, for the Romans, gaining reinforcements, recaptured the city. This was in the earlier days of the Christian era, and at a time when Christian persécutions raged. There then lived in Verulam a prominent man named Alban, a young Roman of good family. In the year 303 a persecuted priest named Amphibalus threw himself upon the mercy of Alban, and sought refuge in his house. The protection was granted, and in a few days the exhortations of Amphibalus had converted his protector to Christianity. The officials, getting word of Amphibalus’ whereabouts, sent a guard to arrest him, whereupon Alban dismissed his guest secretly, and, wrapping himself in the priest’s robe and hood, awaited the soldiers. They seized him, and took him before the magistrates, when the trick was discovered. He was given the alternative of dying or sacrificing to the gods of Rome, but, preferring the crown of martyrdom, after cruel torments he was led to his doom. He was to be taken across the Ver to be beheaded, but miracles appeared. The stream, which had been a-flood, quickly dried up, so that the multitude could pass, and this so touched the executioner that he refused to strike the blow and declared himself also a convert. The executioner’s head was quickly stricken off, and another headsman obtained. Alban meanwhile was athirst, and at his prayer a spring broke from the ground for his refreshment. The new executioner struck off Alban’s head, but in doing so his eyes dropped from their sockets. On the spot where Alban died the abbey was afterwards built. His martyrdom did not save Amphibalus, who was soon captured and put to death at Redburn, a few miles away, where his relics were afterwards discovered and enshrined, like those of his pupil, in the abbey.

The sacrifice of the protomartyr brought its fruits. Verulam became Christian, and within a century was paying him the honors of a saint. In the eighth century King Offa of Mercia, having treacherously murdered King Ethelbert, became conscience-stricken, and to propitiate Heaven founded the abbey. He built a Benedictine monastery, which was richly endowed, and gradually attracted the town away from Verulam and over to its present site. This monastery existed until the Norman Conquest, when it was rebuilt, the ruins of Verulam serving as a quarry. Thus began the great abbey of St. Albans, which still overlooks the Ver, although it has been materially altered since. It prospered greatly, and the close neighborhood to London brought many pilgrims as well as royal visits. The abbots were invested with great powers and became dictatorial and proud, having frequent contests with the townsfolk; and it is recorded that one young man who applied for admission to the order, being refused on account of his ignorance, went abroad and ultimately became Pope Adrian IV. But he bore the abbot no ill-will, afterwards granting it many favors. Cardinal Wolsey was once the abbot, but did not actively govern it. In 1539 its downfall came, and it surrendered to King Henry VIII. The deed of surrender, signed by thirty-nine monks, is still preserved, and the seal is in the British Museum. The abbey is now in ruins; the church and gateway remain, but the great group of buildings that composed it has mostly disappeared, so that the old monastery is almost as completely effaced as Verulam. But the church, by being bought for $2000 for the St. Albans parish church, is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting ecclesiastical structures in England; yet its great length and massive central tower are rather unfavorable to its picturesqueness, though the tower when seen from a distance impresses by its grandeur and simplicity. In this tower, as well as in other parts of the church, can be detected the ancient bricks from Verulam. The ground-plan of St. Albans Church is a Latin cross, and it is five hundred and forty-eight feet long. The western part was erected in the twelfth, and the greater portion of the nave and choir in the thirteenth century. The floor of the choir is almost paved with sepulchral slabs, though of the two hundred monuments the church once contained barely a dozen remain. At the back of the high altar was the great treasury of the abbey, the shrine enclosing St. Alban’s relics, but this was destroyed at the Reformation: some fragments have been since discovered, and the shrine thus reproduced with tolerable completeness. On the side of the chapel is a wooden gallery, with cupboards beneath and a staircase leading up to it. In the shrine and cupboards were the abbey treasures, and in the gallery the monks kept watch at night lest they should be despoiled. This vigilance, we are told, was necessary, for rival abbeys were by no means scrupulous about the means by which they augmented their stores of relics. This quaint gallery, still preserved, is five hundred years old. Near the shrine is the tomb of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, brother of King Henry V. and regent during the minority of Henry VI., who was assassinated at Windsor. The tomb was opened in 1703, and the skeleton found buried among spices and enclosed in two coffins, the outer of lead. The vault remained opened, and visitors purloined good Humphrey’s bones till nearly all had disappeared, when the authorities concluded it was better to close up the vault and save what remained. The massive gatehouse, which still exists, was built in Richard II.’s reign, and was used for a jail until not long ago they determined to put a school there. In front of it the martyr Tankerfield was burnt, and buried in 1555 in a little triangular graveyard which still exists. Fox, in his Book of Martyrs, relates that he endured the pain with great constancy, and testified to the last against the errors of his persecutors.

In the town of St. Albans, near the abbey and at the junction of two streets, stands the ancient clock-tower, built in the early part of the fifteenth century, and mainly of flint. It occupies the site of an earlier one said to have been erected by two ladies of Verulam, who, wandering alone in the woods and becoming lost, saw a light in a house, sought refuge there, and erected the tower on the site as a memorial of their deliverance. The bell in this tower was in former days used to ring the curfew. The town itself has little to show. In the church of St. Peter, among the monumental brasses, is the one to a priest often quoted, that reads:

“Lo, all that here I spent, that some time had I; All that I gave in good intent, that now have I; That I neither gave nor lent, that now abie I; That I kept till I went, that lost I.”

Edward Strong, the mason who built St. Paul’s Cathedral in London under the direction of Wren, is also buried in this church. Its chief tenants, however, are the slain at the second battle of St. Albans in the Wars of the Roses. At the first of these battles, fought in 1455 on the east side of the town, Henry of Lancaster was wounded and captured by the Duke of York. The second battle, a much more important contest, was fought on Shrove Tuesday, February 17, 1461, at Barnard’s Heath, north of the town, and near St. Peter’s Church. Queen Margaret of Lancaster led her forces in person, and was victorious over the Yorkists under the Earl of Warwick, liberating the captive king, who was in the enemy’s camp, and following the battle by a ruthless execution of prisoners. King Henry, who had gone to St. Alban’s shrine in tribulation when captured in the earlier contest, also went there again in thanksgiving when thus liberated six years later. The town of St. Albans, by the growth of time, has stretched across the Ver, and one straggling suburb reaches into the north-western angle of the ruins of ancient Verulam, where it clusters around the little church of St. Michael within the Roman city. This is a plain church, built in patches, parts of it nearly a thousand years old, and is the burial place of Francis Bacon, who was Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans. Within a niche on the side of the chancel is his familiar effigy in marble, where he sits in an arm-chair and contemplatively gazes upward. From these ruins of Verulam is obtained the best view of St. Alban’s Abbey, with the town in the background, overlooked by its clock-tower.

HATFIELD HOUSE.

A short distance east of St. Albans is Hatfield, and in a fine park in the suburbs stands the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Salisbury Hatfield House. The place is ancient, though the house is completely modern. The manor was given by King Edgar to the monastery at Ely, and, as in course of time the abbot became a bishop, the manor afterwards became known as Bishops Hatfield, a name that it still bears. The oldest portion of the present buildings was erected in the reign of Henry VII., and in the time of his successor it passed into possession of the Crown. Here lived young Edward VI., and he was escorted by the Earl of Hertford and a cavalcade of noblemen from Hatfield to London for his coronation. The youthful king granted Hatfield to his sister Elizabeth, and here she was kept in Queen Mary’s reign after her release from the Tower. She was under the guardianship of Sir Thomas Pope when, in November, 1558, Queen Mary died, and Sir William Cecil sent messengers from London to apprise Elizabeth that the crown awaited her. We are told that when they arrived the princess was found in the park, sitting under a spreading oak a noble tree then, but time has since made sad havoc with it, though the remains are carefully preserved as one of the most precious memorials at Hatfield. The family of Cecil, thus introduced to Hatfield, was destined to continue associated with its fortunes. Sir William came to the manor on the next day, and then peers and courtiers of all ilks flocked thither to worship the rising sun. On the following day the queen gave her first reception in the hall and received the fealty of the leading men of every party; but she did not forget Cecil, for her earliest act was to appoint him her chief secretary, lord treasurer, and adviser a tie that continued for forty years and was only sundered by death. Cecil was afterwards made Lord Burghley, and the confidence thus first reposed in him within the hall that was afterwards to become the home of his descendants was most remarkable. “No arts,” writes Lord Macaulay, “could shake the confidence which she reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex, touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman, but no rival could deprive the treasurer of the place which he possessed in the favor of the queen. She sometimes chid him sharply, but he was the man whom she delighted to honor. For Burghley she forgot her usual parsimony, both of wealth and dignities; for Burghley she relaxed that severe etiquette to which she was unreasonably attached. Every other person to whom she addressed her speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye fell, instantly sank on his knee. For Burghley alone a chair was set in her presence, and there the old minister, by birth only a plain Lincolnshire esquire, took his ease, while the haughty heirs of the Fitzalans and De Veres humbled themselves to the dust around him. At length, having survived all his early coadjutors and rivals, he died, full of years and honors.”

But it was not until after his death that Hatfield came into possession of his family. He built Burghley House near Stamford in Lincolnshire, and left it to his younger son, Sir Robert Cecil. After Elizabeth’s death, King James I. expressed a preference for Burghley over Hatfield, and an exchange was made by which Hatfield passed into possession of Sir Robert, who had succeeded his father as chief minister, and, though in weak health and of small stature, was a wise and faithful servant of the queen and of her successor. In Elizabeth’s last illness, when she persisted in sitting propped up on a stool by pillows, he urged her to rest herself, and inadvertently said she “must go to bed.” The queen fired up. “Must!” cried she. “Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man, thy father if he had been alive durst not have used that word.” Sir Robert did not survive the queen many years, and to him King James’s peaceful succession to the throne is said to have been greatly due. The king made him the Earl of Salisbury, and the title descended for several generations, until, in 1773, the seventh earl was promoted to the rank of marquis, and now Robert Cecil, the third Marquis of Salisbury and one of the leaders of the Conservative party, presides over the estates at Hatfield. The chief entrance to Hatfield House is on the northern side, and above it rises a cupola. The buildings form three sides of an oblong, the longer line fronting the north and the two wings pointing towards the south. They are of brick, with stone dressings and facings, and are admired as a faithful example of the excellent domestic architecture of the early part of the seventeenth century. The approach through the park from the town is of great beauty, the grand avenue, bordered by stately trees, conducting the visitor to a court in front of the house enclosed by a balustrade with handsome gates. Within the building the most remarkable features are the galleries, extending along the entire southern front. The gallery on the ground floor was formerly a corridor, open on one side to the air; but at a comparatively recent period this has been enclosed with glass, and thus converted into a gallery paved with black and white marble, and ornamented with arms and armor, some being trophies from the Armada and others from the Crimea. Here is the rich saddle-cloth used on the white steed that Queen Elizabeth rode at Tilbury. There are a fine chapel and attractive state-apartments, but around the old house there lingers a tale of sorrow. The western wing was burned in 1835, and the dowager marchioness, the grandmother of the present marquis, then five years old, perished in the flames, which originated in her chamber. This wing has been finely restored, and the room in which she was burned contains her portrait, an oval medallion let into the wall over the fireplace. It is the sweet and sunny face of a young girl, and her tragic fate in helpless age reminds of Solon’s warning as we look at the picture: “Count no one happy till he dies.” In the gallery at Hatfield are portraits of King Henry VIII. and all six of his wives. In the library, which is rich in historical documents, is the pedigree of Queen Elizabeth, emblazoned in 1559, and tracing her ancestry in a direct line back to Adam! The state bedrooms have been occupied by King James, Cromwell, and Queen Victoria. In the gardens, not far from the house, is the site of the old episcopal palace of Bishops Hatfield, of which one side remains standing, with the quaint gatehouse now used as an avenue of approach up the hill from the town to the stables. There is a fine view of the town through the ancient gateway. Here lived the princess Elizabeth, and in the halls where kings have banqueted the marquis’s horses now munch their oats. Immediately below, in the town, is Salisbury Chapel, in which repose the bones of his ancestors.

Also in Hertfordshire are Cassiobury, the seat of the Earls of Essex, whose ancestor, Lord Capel, who was beheaded in 1648 for his loyalty to King Charles I., brought the estate into the family by his marriage with Elizabeth Morison; and Knebworth, the home of Lord Lytton the novelist, which has been the home of his ancestors since the time of Henry VII., when it was bought by Sir Robert Lytton. The “Great Bed of Ware” is one of the curiosities of the county a vast bed twelve feet square, originally at the Saracen’s Head Inn. It was built for King Edward IV., and was curiously carved, and has had a distinguished place in English literary allusions. The bed still exists at Rye House in Hertfordshire, where it was removed a few years ago. A dozen people have slept in it at the same time.

AUDLEY END AND SAFFRON WALDEN.

Journeying farther from London, and into the county of Essex, we come to the little river Cam, and on the side of its valley, among the gentle undulations of the Essex uplands, is seen the palace of Audley End, and beyond it the village of Saffron Walden. Here in earlier times was the abbey of Walden, which, when dissolved by Henry VIII., was granted to Sir Thomas Audley, who then stood high in royal favor. But almost all remains of this abbey have disappeared, and Sir Thomas, who was Speaker of the House, got the grant because of his industry in promoting the king’s wishes for the dissolution of the religious houses, and was also made Lord Audley of Walden. This, as Fuller tells us, was “a dainty morsel, an excellent receipt to clear the Speaker’s voice, and make him speak clear and well for his master.” But he did not live long to enjoy it, although giving the estate his name, and it passed ultimately to the Duke of Norfolk, after whose execution it became the property of his son, Lord Thomas Howard, whom Queen Elizabeth made Baron Walden, and King James appointed lord treasurer and promoted to be Earl of Suffolk. He built the great palace of Audley End, which was intended to eclipse every palace then existing in England. It was begun in 1603, and was finished in 1616, the date still remaining upon one of the gateways. King James twice visited Audley End while building, and is said to have remarked, as he viewed its enormous proportions, that the house was too large for a king, though it might do for a lord treasurer. It cost over $1,000,000, but no accurate account was kept, and the earl was so straitened by the outlay, that after being dismissed from office he was compelled to sell out several other estates, and died nearly $200,000 in debt. The second and third earls tried to maintain the white elephant, but found it too heavy a burden, and the latter sold the house to King Charles II. for $250,000, of which $100,000 remained on mortgage. It was known as the New Palace, and became a royal residence. It consisted of a large outer court and a smaller inner one. Around these the buildings were constructed from one to three stories high, with towers at the corners and centres of the fronts. The impression produced by the design is said not to have been very favorable, it being insufficiently grand for so vast a pile, and while it was a pleasant residence in summer, the want of facilities for heating made it in winter little better than a barn. When Pepys visited Audley End in 1660 and 1668, his chief impression seems to have been of the cellars, for he writes: “Only the gallery is good, and, above all things, the cellars, where we went down and drank of much good liquor. And, indeed, the cellars are fine, and here my wife and I did sing, to my great content.” It was in the following year that the house was sold to the king. In 1701, however, it passed back to the fifth Earl of Suffolk, and about twenty years later a large part of the structure was taken down. Three sides of the great court, including the gallery referred to by Pepys, were demolished, and Audley End was reduced to the buildings around the smaller quadrangle; this was further reduced in 1749, so that the house assumed its present appearance of three sides of a square, open towards the east, and thus remains an excellent type of an early Jacobean mansion, its best view being from the garden front. Within it has fine apartments, and contains the only authentic portrait of George II. that is known. This king would never sit for his picture, and the artist by stealth sketched his likeness from a closet near the staircase of Kensington Palace, where he had an excellent view of the peculiar monarch. It is, as Thackeray says, the picture of a “red-faced, staring princeling,” but is believed true to nature nevertheless. Lady Suffolk, it seems, was one of his few favorites. Audley End has been for a long time in possession of the Barons of Braybrooke, and is their principal seat. Lord Cornwallis, of American Revolutionary remembrance, was a member of this family, and his portrait is preserved here.

Over the undulating surface of the park, barely a mile away, can be seen the pretty spire of Saffron Walden Church, with the village clustering around it. Here on a hill stand the church and the castle, originally of Walden, but from the extensive cultivation of saffron in the neighborhood the town came to have that prefix given it; it was grown there from the time of Edward III., and the ancient historian Fuller quaintly tells us “it is a most admirable cordial, and under God I owe my life, when sick with the small-pox, to the efficacy thereof.” Fuller goes on to tell us that “the sovereign power of genuine saffron is plainly proved by the antipathy of the crocodile thereto; for the crocodile’s tears are never true save when he is forced where saffron groweth, whence he hath his name of croco-deilos, or the saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all poison, and it all antidote.” Saffron attained its highest price at Walden in Charles II.’s time, when it was as high as twenty dollars a pound, but its disuse in medicine caused its value to diminish, and at the close of the last century its culture had entirely disappeared from Walden, though the prefix still clings to the name of the town. While saffron was declining, this neighborhood became a great producer of truffles, and the dogs were trained here to hunt the fungus that is so dear to the epicure’s palate. The church of St. Mary, which is a fine Perpendicular structure and the most conspicuous feature of Saffron Walden, was built about four hundred years ago, though the slender spire crowning its western tower is of later date, having been built in the present century. In the church are buried the six Earls of Suffolk who lived at Audley End, and all of whom died between 1709 and 1745. The ruins of the ancient castle, consisting chiefly of a portion of the keep and some rough arches, are not far from the church, and little is known of its origin. There is a museum near the ruins which contains some interesting antiquities and a fine natural-history collection. The newly-constructed town-hall, built in antique style, overhanging the footway and supported on arches, is one of the most interesting buildings in Saffron Walden: the mayor and corporation meeting here date their charter from 1549. Not far away, at Newport, lived Nell Gwynn in a modest cottage with a royal crown over the door. She was one of the numerous mistresses of Charles II., and is said to have been the only one who remained faithful to him. She bore him two sons, one dying in childhood, and the other becoming the Duke of St. Albans, a title created in 1684, and still continued in the persons of his descendants of the family of Beauclerc. Nell was originally an orange-girl who developed into a variety actress, and, fascinating the king, he bought her from Lord Buckhurst, her lover, for an earldom and a pension. Nell is said to have cost the king over $300,000 in four years. She had her good qualities and was very popular in England, and she persuaded the king to found Chelsea Hospital for disabled soldiers, and he also bore her genuine affection, for his dying words were, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” She survived him about seven years. Also in the neighborhood, at Littlebury, was the home of Winstanley, the builder of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, who perished in it when it was destroyed by a terrific storm in 1703.

Digressing down to the coast of Essex, on the North Sea, we find at the confluence of the Stour and Orwell the best harbor on that side of England, bordered by the narrow and old-fashioned streets of the ancient seaport of Harwich. Here vast fleets seek shelter in easterly gales behind the breakwater that is run out from the Beacon Hill. From here sail many steamers to Rotterdam and Antwerp in connection with the railways from London, and the harbor-entrance is protected by the ancient Languard Fort, built by James I. on a projecting spit of land now joined to the Suffolk coast to the northward. One of the most interesting scenes at Harwich is a group of old wrecks that has been utilized for a series of jetties in connection with a shipbuilder’s yard. Weather-beaten and battered, they have been moored in a placid haven, even though it be on the unpicturesque coast of Essex.

CAMBRIDGE.

Returning to the valley of the Cam, we will follow it down to the great university city of Cambridge, fifty-eight miles north of London. It stands in a wide and open valley, and is built on both banks of the river, which is navigable up to this point, so that the town is literally the “Bridge over the Cam.” The situation is not so picturesque or so favorable as that of the sister university city of Oxford, but it is nevertheless an attractive city, the stately buildings being admirably set off by groups and avenues of magnificent trees that flourish nowhere to better advantage than in English scenery. The chief colleges are ranged along the right bank of the Cam, with their fronts away from the water, while behind each there is a sweep of deliciously green meadowland known as the “Backs of the Colleges,” surrounded by trees, and with a leafy screen of foliage making the background beyond the buildings. While the greater part of modern Cambridge is thus on the right bank of the river, the oldest portion was located on a low plateau forming the opposite shore. It is uncertain when the university was first established there. Henry Beauclerc, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, studied the arts and sciences at Cambridge, and when he became king he bestowed many privileges upon the town and fixed a regular ferry over the Cam. By the thirteenth century scholars had assembled there and become a recognized body, according to writs issued by Henry III. In 1270 the title of a university was formally bestowed, and the oldest known collegiate foundation Peterhouse, or St. Peter’s College had been established a few years before. Cambridge has in all seventeen colleges, and the present act of incorporation was granted by Queen Elizabeth. The Duke of Devonshire is the chancellor. The student graduates either “in Honors” or “in the Poll.” In the former case he can obtain a distinction in mathematics, classics, the sciences, theology, etc. The names of the successful students are arranged in three classes in a list called the Tripos, a name derived from the three-legged stool whereon sat in former days one of the bachelors, who recited a set of satirical verses at the time the degrees were conferred. In the Mathematical Tripos the first class are called Wranglers, and the others Senior and Junior Optimes. Thus graduate the “Dons” of Cambridge.

TRINITY AND ST. JOHN’S COLLEGES.

Let us now take a brief review of the seventeen colleges of Cambridge. In Trinity Street is Trinity College, founded in 1546 by Henry VIII. It consists of four quadrangular courts, the Great Court being the largest quadrangle in the university, and entered from the street by the grand entrance-tower known as the King’s Gateway. On the northern side of the quadrangle are the chapel and King Edward’s Court, and in the centre of the southern side the Queen’s Tower, with a statue of Queen Mary. In the centre of the quadrangle is a quaint conduit. The chapel is a plain wainscoted room, with an ante-chapel filled with busts of former members of the college among them Bacon and Macaulay and also a noble statue of Newton. Trinity College Hall is one hundred feet long and the finest in Cambridge, its walls being adorned with several portraits. It was in Trinity that Byron, Dryden, Cowley, Herbert, and Tennyson were all students. There are said to be few spectacles more impressive than the choral service on Sunday evening in term-time, when Trinity Chapel is crowded with surpliced students. In the Master’s Lodge, on the western side of the quadrangle, are the state-apartments where royalty is lodged when visiting Cambridge, and here also in special apartments the judges are housed when on circuit. Through screens or passages in the hall the second quadrangle, Neville’s Court, is entered, named for a master of the college who died in 1615. Here is the library, an attractive apartment supported on columns, which contains Newton’s telescope and some of his manuscripts, and also a statue of Byron. The King’s (or New) Court, is a modern addition, built in the present century at a cost of $200,000. From this the College Walks open on the western side, the view from the gateway looking down the long avenue of lime trees being strikingly beautiful. The Master’s Court is the fourth quadrangle.

Adjoining Trinity is its rival, St. John’s College, also consisting of four courts, though one of them is of modern construction and on the opposite bank of the river. This college was founded by the countess Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., and opened in 1516, having been for three centuries previously a hospital. It is generally regarded from this circumstance as being the oldest college at Cambridge. The gateway is a tower of mingled brick and stone and one of the earliest structures of the college. Entering it, on the opposite side of the court is seen the New Chapel, but recently completed, a grand edifice one hundred and seventy-two feet long and sixty-three feet high, with a surmounting tower whose interior space is open and rises eighty-four feet above the pavement. The roof and the windows are richly colored, and variegated marbles have been employed in the interior decoration. The eastern end is a five-sided apse; the ceiling is vaulted in oak, while the chapel has a magnificent screen. Between the first and second courts is the hall, recently enlarged and decorated, and the library is on the northern side of the third court. It is a picturesque room of James I.’s time, with a timbered roof, whitened walls, and carved oaken bookcases black with age. The second court is of earlier date, and a fine specimen of sixteenth-century brickwork. On the southern side is an octagonal turret, at the top of which is the queer little room occupied by Dr. Wood, whose statue is in the chapel. When he first came to college from his humble home in the north of England he was so poor that he studied by the light of the staircase candle, and wrapped his feet in wisps of hay in winter to save the cost of a fire. He became the Senior Wrangler, and in due course a Fellow, and ultimately master of the college. To this was added the deanery of Ely. Dying, he bequeathed his moderate fortune for the aid of poor students and the benefit of his college. Of the third court the cloister on the western side fronts the river. The New Court, across the Cam, is a handsome structure, faced with stone and surmounted by a tower. A covered Gothic bridge leads to it over the river from the older parts of the college. In the garden along the river, known as the Wilderness, Prior the poet is said to have laid out the walks. Here among the students who have taken recreation have been Wordsworth and Herschel, Wilberforce and Stillingfleet.

CAIUS AND CLARE COLLEGES.

It took two founders to establish Gonville and Caius College, and both their names are preserved in the title, though it is best known as Caius (pronounced Keys) College. Its buildings were ancient, but have been greatly changed in the present century, so that the chief entrance is now beneath a lofty tower, part of the New Court and fronting the Senate House. This New Court is a fine building, ornamented with busts of the most conspicuous men of Caius. Beyond is the smaller or Caius Court of this college, constructed in the sixteenth century. The “Gate of Virtue and Wisdom” connects them, and is surmounted by an odd turret. On the other side is the “Gate of Honor,” a good specimen of the Renaissance. The “Gate of Humility” was removed in rebuilding the New Court. Thus did this college give its students veritable sermons in stones. The founders of Caius were physicians, and among its most eminent members were Hervey and Jeremy Taylor. Adjoining Caius is Trinity Hall, as noted for the law as its neighbor is for medicine, and immediately to the south is a group of university buildings. Among these is the Senate House, opened in 1730, where the university degrees are conferred. It has a fine interior, especially the ceiling, and among the statues is an impressive one of the younger Pitt. The most exciting scene in the Senate House is when the result of the mathematical examination is announced. This for a long time was almost the only path to distinction at Cambridge. When all are assembled upon a certain Friday morning in January, one of the examiners stands up in the centre of the western gallery and just as the clock strikes nine proclaims to the crowd the name of the “Senior Wrangler,” or first student of the year, with a result of deafening cheers; then the remainder of the list is read. On the following day the recipients of degrees and visitors sit on the lower benches, and the undergraduates cram the galleries. Then with much pomp the favored student is conducted to the vice-chancellor to receive his first degree alone. The University Library is near by, and, as it gets a copy of every book entered for English copyright, it has become a large one. Some of the manuscripts it contains are very valuable, particularly the Codex Beza, a manuscript of the Gospels given in 1581 by Beza.

Adjoining Trinity Hall is the beautiful court of Clare College, dating from the time of the Civil Wars, when it replaced older structures. Its exterior is most attractive to visitors, exhibiting the pleasing architecture of the sixteenth century. The river-front is much admired, while the gateway is marked by quaint lantern-like windows. In the library is one of the rare Bibles of Sixtus V., and in the Master’s Lodge is kept the poison-cup of Clare, which is both curious and beautiful. The gentle lady’s mournful fate has been told by Scott in Marmion. Tillotson and other famous divines were students at Clare, and the college also claims Chaucer, but this is doubtful, though the college figures in his story of the “Miller of Trumpington,” and also adjuts upon Trumpington Street. Upon the opposite side of this street is Great St. Mary’s Church, the university church, an attractive building of Perpendicular architecture and having fine chimes of bells. Here the vice chancellor listens to a sermon every Sunday afternoon in term-time. Formerly, on these occasions, the “heads and doctors” of the university sat in an enclosed gallery built like a sort of gigantic opera-box, and profanely called the “Golgotha.” A huge pulpit faced them on the other end of the church, and the centre formed a sort of pit. Modern improvements have, however, swept this away, replacing it with ordinary pews.

KING’S, CORPUS CHRISTI, AND QUEENS’ COLLEGES.

Trumpington Street broadens into the King’s Parade, and here, entered through a modern buttressed screen pierced with openings filled with tracery, is King’s College. It was founded by Henry VI. in 1440, and in immediate connection with the school at Eton, from which the more advanced scholars were to be transferred. The great King’s Chapel, which gives an idea of the grand scale on which this college was to be constructed, is the special boast of Cambridge. It is two hundred and eighty feet long, forty-five feet wide, and seventy-eight feet high, with a marvellously fretted roof of stone, and large windows at the sides and ends filled with beautiful stained glass. This is the most imposing of all the buildings in Cambridge, and occupies the entire northern side of the college court. Its fine doorway is regarded as the most pleasing part of the exterior design. The stained-glass windows are divided into an upper and lower series of pictures. The lower is a continuous chain of gospel history, while the upper exhibits the Old-Testament types of the subjects represented below. Although designed on such a magnificent scale, the Wars of the Roses interfered with the completion of King’s College, and even the chapel was not finished until Henry VIII.’s reign. The other college buildings are modern.

Adjoining King’s is Corpus Christi College, the buildings being almost entirely modern. Of the ancient structure one small court alone remains, a picturesque steep-roofed building almost smothered in ivy. Corpus Christi Hall is said to have been partly designed after the great hall of Kenilworth. In its library are the famous manuscripts rescued from the suppressed monasteries, there being four hundred interesting and curious volumes of these precious documents, which are most jealously guarded. Opposite Corpus is St. Catharine’s College, with a comparatively plain hall and chapel. Behind this is Queens’ College, an antique structure, though not a very ancient foundation. Its entrance-tower is of brick, and a quaint low cloister runs around the interior court. Within is Erasmus’s Court, where are pointed out the rooms once occupied by that great scholar. Across the river a wooden bridge leads to a terrace by the water-side with an overhanging border of elms, and known as Erasmus’s Walk. This college was founded by the rival queens, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Widvile, and though it is very proud of having had the great scholar of the Reformation within its halls, he does not seem to have entirely reciprocated the pleasure; for he complains in a letter to a friend that while there “he was blockaded with the plague, beset with thieves, and drugged with bad wine.” Returning to Trumpington Street, we find on the western side the University Printing Press, named from the younger statesman the Pitt Press. He represented the university in Parliament, and the lofty square and pinnacled tower of this printing-office is one of the most conspicuous objects in Cambridge. Yet even this structure has its contrasts, for the “Cantabs” consider that its architecture is as bad as its typography is good.

OTHER CAMBRIDGE COLLEGES.

1. The Senate Hous. The Pitt Pres. The Round Churc. Great St. Mary’. Fitzwilliam Museum.]

Pembroke College, near the Pitt Press, has a chapel designed by Christopher Wren and recently enlarged. This was the college of Spenser and Gray, the latter having migrated from the neighboring Peterhouse because of the practical jokes the students played upon him. It was also Pitt’s college. Opposite Pembroke is Peterhouse, or St. Peter’s College, the most ancient foundation in Cambridge, established by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, in 1284. Beyond Peterhouse is the Fitzwilliam Museum, a most successful reproduction of classic architecture, built and maintained by a legacy of $500,000 left by Viscount Fitzwilliam in 1816. It contains an excellent art and literary collection, which was begun by the viscount. This is regarded as probably the finest classical building constructed in the present century in England. A short distance beyond, at the end of a water-course, is an attractive hexagonal structure with niched recesses and ornamental capstones. This is Hobson’s Conduit, erected in 1614 by Thomas Hobson. This benefactor of Cambridge was a carrier between London and the university, and is said to have been the originator of “Hobson’s Choice.” The youngest foundation at Cambridge is Downing College, erected in 1807, an unobtrusive structure, and near by is Emmanuel College, built on the site of a Dominican convent and designed by Wren. It was founded by Sir Walter Mildmay, the Puritan, in 1584, who on going to court was taxed by Queen Mary with having erected a Puritan college. “No, madam,” he replied, “far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws, but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.” Sir William Temple was educated at Emmanuel. Christ’s College is near by, chiefly interesting from its associations with Milton, whose rooms are still pointed out, while a mulberry tree that he planted is preserved in the garden. Latimer and Paley, with a host of other divines, were students here. This college was founded by Queen Margaret, mother of Henry VII., and some beautiful silver plate, her gift to the Fellows, is still preserved. At Sidney-Sussex College Cromwell was a Fellow in 1616, and his crayon portrait hangs in the dining-hall. Owing to want of means, he left without taking a degree. An oriel window projecting over the street is said to mark his chamber. Upon Bridge Street is the Round Church, or St. Sepulchre’s Church, obtaining its name from its circular Norman nave, this being one of the four “Temple churches” still remaining in England. Across the Cam stands Magdalene College, founded in 1519 by Baron Thomas Audley of Walden. Within the building behind it are the literary collections of Samuel Pepys, who was secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., together with the manuscript of his famous diary, a book of marvellous gossip, recording the peccadilloes of its author, the jealousy of his wife, and the corruptions of the court. He was educated at Magdalene.

Jesus Lane leads out of Bridge Street to Jesus College, remotely placed on the river-bank, and of which the chief building of interest is the chapel, a fine Gothic structure. This college is upon the site of a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1133, and is entered by a lofty brick gate-tower which is much admired, and was constructed soon after the foundation of the college in 1497 by the Bishop of Ely, whose successors until this day retain the gift of the mastership. From Jesus Lane a path leads down to the boat-houses on the river bank, where each college has a boat-club wearing a distinctive dress. The racecourse is at the Long Reach, just below the town. Of the ancient Cambridge Castle, built by the Conqueror in 1068, nothing remains but the mound upon Castle Hill, where the county courts are now located. Cambridge, however, has little besides its university buildings to attract attention. In the suburbs are two colleges for the instruction of lady students, and two miles away is Trumpington, near which is the site of the mill told of in Chaucer’s Canterbury tale of the Miller of Trumpington. The place is now used for gates to admit the river-water into Byron’s Pool, which is so called because the poet frequently bathed in it when he was an undergraduate of Trinity College.

THE FENLAND.

The river Cam below Cambridge flows through that country of reclaimed marshland which ultimately ends in the Wash, between Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and is known as the Fenland. This “Great Level of the Fens” has been drained and reclaimed by the labors of successive generations of engineers, and contains about six hundred and eighty thousand acres of the richest lands in England, being as much the product of engineering skill as Holland itself. Not many centuries ago this vast surface, covering two thousand square miles, was entirely abandoned to the waters, forming an immense estuary of the Wash, into which various rivers discharge the rainfall of Central England. In winter it was an inland sea and in summer a noxious swamp. The more elevated parts were overgrown with tall reeds that in the distance looked like fields of waving corn, and immense flocks of wild-fowl haunted them. Into this dismal swamp the rivers brought down their freshets, the waters mingling and winding by devious channels before they reached the sea. The silt with which they were laden became deposited in the basin of the Fens, and thus the river-beds were choked up, compelling the intercepted waters to force new channels through the ooze; hence there are numerous abandoned beds of old rivers still traceable amid the level of the Fens. This region now is drained and dyked, but in earlier times it was a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy islets, with frequent “islands” of firmer and more elevated ground. These were availed of for the monasteries of the Fenland Ely, Peterborough, Crowland, and others, all established by the Benedictines. The abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, although situated some distance from the marshland, may also be classed among the religious houses of the Fens. This abbey, which is a short distance east of Cambridge, was built in the eleventh century as the shrine of St. Edmund, King of East Anglia, who was killed by the Danes about the year 870. It soon became one of the wealthiest English monasteries, and was the chief religious centre of that section. Only ruins remain, the chief being the abbey-gate, now the property of the Marquis of Bristol, and the Norman tower and church, which have recently been restored. In the suburbs of Bury is Hengrave Hall, one of the most interesting Tudor mansions remaining in the kingdom. Originally, it was three times its present size, and was built by Sir Thomas Kytson about 1525. Its gate-house is rich in details, and the many windows and projections of the southern front group picturesquely.

Following the Cam northward from Cambridge through the marshland, we come to the Isle of Ely, the great “fortress of the Fens,” and standing upon its highest ground the cathedral of Ely. Here St. Etheldreda founded a monastery in the seventh century, which ultimately became a cathedral, Ely having been given a bishop in 1109. The present buildings date all the way from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, so that they give specimens of all Gothic styles. The cathedral is five hundred and thirty-seven feet long, and from the summit of its western tower can be gained a fine view of the spreading fens and lowlands of Cambridgeshire, amid which stands the Isle of Ely. One of the finest views of this tower is that obtained from the road leading to Ely Close. Before drainage had improved the surrounding country this was one of the strongest fortresses in England, and it was also one of the last to yield to the Norman Conquest, its reduction causing King William heavy loss. Afterwards he regarded it as among his most loyal strongholds. The lofty tower, and indeed the whole cathedral, are landmarks for the entire country round, and from the rising ground at Cambridge, fully twenty miles to the southward, can be seen standing out against the sky. From the dykes and fields and meadows that have replaced the marshes along the Cam and Ouse the huge tower can be seen looming up in stately grandeur. It is almost the sole attraction of the sleepy little country town. The great feature of this massive cathedral is the wonderful central octagon, with its dome-like roof crowned by a lofty lantern, which is said to be the only Gothic dome of its kind in existence in England or France. We are told that the original cathedral had a central tower, which for some time showed signs of instability, until on one winter’s morning in 1321 it came down with an earthquake crash and severed the cathedral into four arms. In reconstructing it, to ensure security, the entire breadth of the church was taken as a base for the octagon, so that it was more than three times as large as the original square tower. Magnificent windows are inserted in the exterior faces of the octagon, and the entire cathedral has been recently restored. It was to Bishop Cox, who then presided over the see of Ely, that Queen Elizabeth, when he objected to the alienation of certain church property, wrote her famous letter:

“PROUD PRELATE: You know what you were before I made you what you are; if you do not immediately comply with my request, by God, I will unfrock you.”

“ELIZABETH R.”

1. Old passage from Ely street to Cathedral For. Entrance to Prior Crawdon’s Chape. Old houses in High Street.]

The bishop, it is almost unnecessary to say, surrendered. The town contains little of interest beyond some quaint old houses.

PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.

North-westward of Ely, and just on the border of the Fenland, Saxulf, a thane of Mercia who had acquired great wealth, founded the first and most powerful of the great Benedictine abbeys of this region in the year 655. Around this celebrated religious house has grown the town of Peterborough, now one of the chief railway-junctions in Midland England. The remains of the monastic buildings, and especially of the cathedral, are magnificent, the great feature of the latter being its western front, which was completed in the thirteenth century, and has three great open arches, making probably the finest church-portico in Europe. On the left of the cathedral is the chancel of Becket’s Chapel, now a grammar-school, while on the right is the ancient gateway of the abbot’s lodgings, which has become the entrance to the bishop’s palace. The main part of the cathedral is Norman, though portions are Early English. It is built in the form of a cross, with a smaller transept at the western end, while the choir terminates in an apse, and a central tower rises from four supporting arches. Within the cathedral, over the doorway, is a picture of old Scarlet, Peterborough’s noted sexton, who buried Catharine of Arragon and Mary Queen of Scots. The nave has an ancient wooden roof, carefully preserved and painted with various devices. The transept arches are fine specimens of Norman work. Queen Catharine lies under a slab in the aisle of St. John’s Chapel, but the remains of Queen Mary were removed to Westminster Abbey by James I., to the magnificent tomb he prepared there for his mother.

CROWLAND ABBEY.

Farther northward in the Fenland, and over the border in Lincolnshire, was the Benedictine abbey of “courteous Crowland,” though its remains are now scanty. It derives its name from the “Land of Crows,” which in this part is drained by the Welland River and the great Bedford Level. On one of the many islands of firmer soil abounding in this oozy region the monks constructed their monastery, but had little space for cultivation, and brought their food from remoter possessions. Now, Crowland is no longer an island, for the drainage has made fast land all about, and the ruins have attracted a straggling village. Here is the famous “triangular bridge,” a relic of the abbey. Three streams met, and the bridge was made to accommodate the monks, who, from whatever direction they approached, had to cross one of them. The streams now are conveyed underground, but the bridge remains like a stranded monster which the tide has abandoned, and gives the children a play-place. Its steep half-arches, meeting in the centre, are climbed by rough steps. The dissolved abbey served as a quarry for the village, and hence on this strange bridge and on all the houses fragments of worked stone and of sculpture everywhere appear. It was located at the eastern end of the village, where its ruins still stand up as a guide across the fens, seen from afar. Most of it is in complete ruin, but the north aisle of the nave has been sufficiently preserved to serve as the parish church of Crowland; round about the church and the ruins extends the village graveyard. Set up in the porch beneath the tower is a memorial for William Hill, the sexton, who died in 1792. When forty years old he was blinded by exposure during a snowfall, yet he lived for twenty-five years afterwards, able to find his way everywhere and to know every grave in the churchyard.

In the earlier days of Christianity the solitudes in this Fenland had peculiar attractions for the hermits who fled from the world to embrace an ascetic life. Thus the islands each gradually got its hermit, and the great monasteries grew up by degrees, starting usually in the cell of some recluse. Guthlac, who lived in the seventh century, was of the royal House of Mercia, and voluntarily exiled himself in the Fens. This region was then, according to popular belief, the haunt of myriads of evil spirits, who delighted in attacking the hermits. They assaulted Guthlac in hosts, disturbed him by strange noises, once carried him far away to the icy regions of the North, and not seldom took the form of crows, the easier to torment him; but his steady prayers and penance ultimately put them to flight, and the existence of his cell became known to the world. Ethelbald fled to Guthlac for refuge, and the hermit predicted he would become king, which in time came to pass. Guthlac died at Crowland, and the grateful king built a stone church there. The buildings increased, their great treasure being of course the tomb of the hermit, which became a source of many miracles. The Northmen in the ninth century plundered and destroyed Crowland, but it was restored, and in Edward the Confessor’s time was one of the five religious houses ruled by the powerful abbot of Peterborough. It became the shrine of Waltheof, the Earl of Northampton beheaded for opposing William the Conqueror, and Crowland was thus made a stronghold of English feeling against the Normans, like the other monasteries of the Fens. Its fame declined somewhat after the Conquest, though its hospitality was fully maintained. It had little subsequent history. The abbey was garrisoned by the Royalists, and captured by Cromwell in 1643, after which it fell into ruin. Such has been the fate of almost all the religious houses in the Fens, the merits of which the people in the olden time judged according to a local rhyme which yet survives:

“Ramsay, the bounteous of gold and of fee; Crowland, as courteous as courteous may be; Spalding the rich, and Peterborough the proud; Sawtrey, by the way, that poor abbaye, Gave more alms in one day than all they.”

NORWICH.

Proceeding eastward out of the Fenland and among the hills of Norfolk, the little river Wensum is found to have cut a broad, deep, and trench-like valley into the chalk and gravel plateau. Upon the elevated bank of the river is the irregularly picturesque town of Norwich, with the castle keep rising above the undulating mass of buildings, and the cathedral and its noble spire overtopping the lower portion of the city on the right hand. Norwich is an ancient town, but very little is known with certainty about it anterior to the Danish invasions. We are told that its original location was at the more southerly castle of Caister, whence the inhabitants migrated to the present site, for

“Caister was a city when Norwich was none, And Norwich was built of Caister stone.”

Canute held possession of Norwich and had a castle there, but the present castle seems to date from the Norman Conquest, when it was granted to Ralph de Quader, who turned traitor to the king, causing Norfolk to be besieged, captured, and greatly injured. Then the castle was granted to Roger Bigod. The town grew, and became especially prosperous from the settlement there of numerous Flemish weavers in the fourteenth century and of Walloons in Elizabeth’s reign. It managed to keep pretty well out of the Civil Wars, but a local historian says, “The inhabitants have been saved from stagnation by the exceeding bitterness with which all party and local political questions are discussed and contested, and by the hearty way in which all classes throw themselves into all really patriotic movements, when their party feeling occasionally sleeps for a month or two.” Norwich is pre-eminently a town of churches, into the construction of which flint enters largely, it being dressed with great skill into small roughened cubical blocks.

The great attraction of Norwich is the cathedral, which stands upon a low peninsula enclosed by a semicircular sweep of the river, much of the ground in this region having been originally a swamp. The cathedral is generally approached from its western side, where there is an open space in front of the Close called Tombland, upon which two gates open from it. These are St. Ethelbert’s and the Erpingham gate. The latter, opposite the western front of the cathedral, is named for its builder, “old Sir Thomas Erpingham,” whose “good white head,” Shakespeare tells us, was to be seen on the field of Agincourt. The cathedral is a Norman structure, cruciform in plan, with an exceptionally long nave, an apsidal choir, and attached chapels. The earliest parts of it were begun in 1096, and when partially completed five years afterwards it was handed over to the care of the Benedictine monks. Thirty years later the nave was added, but the cathedral was not completed until about 1150. Twice it was seriously injured by fire, and it was not thoroughly restored for a century, when in 1278 it was again consecrated with great pomp, in the presence of Edward I. and his court, on Advent Sunday. The spire, which is one of its most conspicuous features, was added by Bishop Percy in the fourteenth century, though, having been seriously injured by lightning, it had to be replaced afterwards. At the same time the building was greatly altered, its roofs raised and vaulted, and repairs went on until 1536. Yet, with all the changes that were made in this famous cathedral, no other in England has managed to preserve its original plan so nearly undisturbed.

Entering the nave from the westward, this grand apartment is found to extend two hundred and fifty feet, and to the intersection of the transepts comprises fourteen bays, three of them being included in the choir. The triforium is almost as lofty as the nave-arches, and the solidity of these, surmounted by the grandeur of the upper arcade, gives a magnificent aspect to the nave. Above is the fine vaulted roof, the elaborately carved bosses giving a series of scenes from sacred history extending from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Small chapels were originally erected against the organ-screen, one of them being dedicated to the young St. William, a Norfolk saint who in the twelfth century was tortured and crucified by some Jews. His body, clandestinely buried in a wood, was found, miracles were wrought, and it was translated to the cathedral. The Jews of Norwich were then attacked and plundered, and these outrages were renewed a century later. But times have fortunately changed since then. The choir extends to the eastern apse, and at the back of the altar recent alterations have exposed an interesting relic in a fragment of the original bishop’s throne, an elevated chair of stone placed in the middle of the apse and looking westward. On either side are apsidal chapels. Among the monuments is that to Sir William Boleyn, grandfather to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. He lived at Blickling, about thirteen miles from Norwich, where Anne is believed to have been born. Several bishops also lie in the cathedral, and among the later tombs is that of Dr. Moore, who died in 1779, and whose periwigged head is in grotesque juxtaposition with a cherub making an ugly face and appearing to be drying his eyes with his shirt. The spire of Norwich Cathedral rises two hundred and eighty-seven feet.

Norwich Castle is a massive block of masonry crowning the summit of a mound. Who first built it is unknown, but he is said by popular tradition to sit buried in his chair and full armed deep down in the centre of this mound, and “ready for all contingencies.” But the castle has degenerated into a jail, and the great square tower or keep, ninety-five feet square and seventy feet high, is the only part of the original structure remaining. It has been refaced with new stone, and the interior has also been completely changed. The moat is planted with trees, and on the outside slope the cattle-market is held every Saturday. Norwich has some historical structures. In its grammar school Nelson was a scholar, and his statue stands on the green. On the edge of Tombland stands the house of Sir John Falstaff, a brave soldier and friend of literature, whose memory is greatly prized in Norfolk, but whose name has been forgotten by many in the shadow of Shakespeare’s “Fat Jack.” The chief centre of the town, however, is the market-place, on the slope of a hill, where modernized buildings have replaced some of the more antique structures. Here stands the ancient Guildhall, which in 1413 replaced the old Tolbooth where the market-dues were paid. Within is the sword surrendered to Nelson by Admiral Winthuysen at the battle of St. Vincent, and by him presented to the chief city of his native county of Norfolk. In the olden time the glory of Norwich was the Duke of Norfolk’s palace, but it was destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century by the then duke in a fit of anger because the mayor would not permit his troop of players to march through the town with trumpets blowing. Not a brick of it now stands, the site being covered with small houses. Norwich was formerly famous for its trade in woollens, the Dutch introducing them at the neighboring village of Worsted, whence the name. Now, the coal-mines have aided the spinning-jenny, but the worsteds are overshadowed by other Norwich manufactures. Colman’s mustard-factories cover ten acres, and Barnard’s ornamental iron-work from Norwich is world-renowned. Norwich also contains an enormous brewery, but in this the city is not singular, for what is a Briton without his beer?

BURGHLEY HOUSE.

On the banks of the Welland River, a short distance above Crowland, is Stamford, in Lincolnshire, near which is located the well-known Burghley House, the home of Lord Treasurer Cecil, whose history is referred to in the notice of Hatfield House. This mansion, which is a short distance south of Stamford, is now the seat of the Marquis of Exeter, William Allayne Cecil. It is said to have furnished the text for Lord Bacon’s “Essay on Building,” it having been completed but a short time previously. The plans of this famous house are still preserved in London. It is a parallelogram built around an open court, with a lofty square tower projecting from the western front, and having octangular turrets at the angles. The northern (which is the main) front is divided into three compartments, and bears on the parapet 1587 as the date when the house was finished. Within the building a long corridor, commanding a view of the inner court, leads to a stone staircase which rises to the top of the structure and is peculiarly decorated. There is a fine chapel, and in an adjoining room was Giordano’s renowned painting of “Seneca Dying in the Bath,” which was eulogized in Prior’s poems, he having seen it there, though it is now removed. One of the most interesting pictures in the gallery is that of Henry Cecil, the tenth Earl and the first Marquis of Exeter, his wife, and daughter. Tennyson has woven the romance of their marriage into a poem. Cecil, before coming into his title, was living in seclusion in Shropshire, and fell in love with a farmer’s daughter. He married her under an assumed name, and only disclosed his true rank when, succeeding to his uncle’s title and estates, he became the lord of Burghley and took her home to Burghley House. Tennyson tells how she received the disclosure:

“Thus her heart rejoices greatly, till a gateway she discerns With armorial bearings stately, and beneath the gate she turns; Sees a mansion more majestic than all those she saw before: Many a gallant gay domestic bows before him at the door. And they speak in gentle murmur, when they answer to his call. While he treads with footstep firmer, leading on from hall to hall. And, while now she wonders blindly, nor the meaning can divine, Proudly turns he round and kindly, ‘All of this is mine and thine.’ Here he lives in state and bounty, Lord of Burghley, fair and free, Not a lord in all the county is so great a lord as he. All at once the color flushes her sweet face from brow to chin: As it were with shame she blushes, and her spirit changed within. Then her countenance all over pale again as death did prove; But he clasp’d her like a lover, and he cheer’d her soul with love.”

The building has many attractive apartments, including a ball-room and Queen Elizabeth’s chamber, but it is doubted whether the maiden queen ever visited it, though she did stay at Burghley’s house in Stamford, and here made the celebrated speech to her old minister in which she said that his head and her purse could do anything. Burghley’s eldest son, Thomas, was created Earl of Exeter, and his descendants are now in possession of the house. His younger son, Robert, as previously related, was made Earl of Salisbury, and his descendants hold Hatfield House. The apartments at Burghley are filled with historical portraits. The grand staircase on the southern side of the house is finer than the other, but is not so full of character. The gardens of Burghley were planned by “Capability Brown,” the same who laid out Kew. He imperiously overruled King George III. in the gardening at Kew, and when he died the king is said to have exclaimed with a sigh of relief to the under-gardener, “Brown is dead; now you and I can do what we please here.” Within St. Martin’s Church in Stamford is the canopied tomb of the lord treasurer, constructed of alabaster, and bearing his effigy clad in armor, with the crimson robes of the Garter; it is surrounded with the tombs of his descendants. It was into Stamford that Nicholas Nickleby rode through the snowstorm, and the coach stopped at the George Inn, which was a popular hostelrie in the days of Charles II., as it still remains.

North of Stamford, on the river Witham, is the interesting town of Grantham, containing the quaint grammar-school founded by Bishop Fox of Winchester in 1528 where Sir Isaac Newton was educated. It is recorded by tradition that his career here was not very brilliant as a scholar a circumstance which may be told, if for nothing else, at least for the encouragement of some of the school-boys of a later generation.

LINCOLN.

Continuing northward down the river Witham, we come to a point where the stream has carved in a limestone-capped plateau a magnificent valley, which, changing its course to the eastward, ultimately broadens on its route to the sea into a wide tract of fenland. Here, upon a grand site overlooking the marshes and the valley, stands the city of Lincoln, with its cathedral crowning the top of the hill, while the town-buildings spread down the slope to the riverbank at Brayford Pool, from which the Witham is navigable down to Boston, near the coast, and ultimately discharges into the Wash. The Pool is crowded with vessels and bordered by warehouses, and it receives the ancient Fosse Dyke Canal, which was dug by the Romans to connect the Witham with the more inland river Trent. This was the Roman colony of Lindum, from which the present name of Lincoln is derived, and the noble cathedral crowns the highest ground, known as Steep Hill. William the Conqueror conferred upon Bishop Remigius of Fécamp the see of Dorchester, and he founded in 1075 this celebrated cathedral, which, with its three noble towers and two transepts, is one of the finest in England. Approaching it from the town, at the foot of the hill is encountered the Stonebow, a Gothic gateway of the Tudor age, which serves as the guild-hall. The centre of the western front is the oldest part of Lincoln Cathedral, and the gateway facing it, and forming the chief entrance to the Close, is the Exchequer Gate, an impressive structure built in the reign of Edward III. The cathedral arcade and the lower parts of the two western towers and the western doorway were built in the twelfth century. Subsequently an earthquake shattered the cathedral, and in the thirteenth century it was restored and extended by Bishop Hugh of Avelon, not being finished until 1315. The massive central tower is supported on four grand piers composed of twenty-four shafts, and here is hung the celebrated bell of Lincoln, “Great Tom,” which was recast about fifty years ago, and weighs five and a half tons. The transepts have splendid rose windows, retaining the original stained glass. Lincoln’s shrine was that of St. Hugh, and his choir is surmounted by remarkable vaulting, the eastern end of the church being extended into the Angel Choir, a beautiful specimen of Decorated Gothic, built in 1282 to accommodate the enormous concourse of pilgrims attracted by St. Hugh’s shrine, which stood in this part of the building. In the cathedral is the tomb of Katherine Swynford, wife of John of Gaunt. Adjoining the south-eastern transept are the cloisters and chapter-house. The most ingenious piece of work of the whole structure is the “stone beam,” a bridge with a nearly flat arch, extending between the two western towers over the nave, composed of twenty-two stones, each eleven inches thick, and vibrating sensibly when stepped upon. There is a grand view from the towers over the neighboring country and far away down the Witham towards the sea. The exterior of the cathedral is one of the finest specimens of architecture in the kingdom, its porches, side-chapels, decorated doorways, sculptured capitals, windows, cloisters, and towers admirably illustrating every portion of the history of English architecture. Its interior length is four hundred and eighty-two feet, the great transept two hundred and fifty feet, and the lesser transept one hundred and seventy feet. The western towers are one hundred and eighty feet high, and the central tower two hundred and sixty feet, while the width of the cathedral’s noble western front is one hundred and seventy-four feet. Upon the southern side of the hill, just below it, are the stately ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, of which the tower has recently been restored. Bishop Hugh’s ruined Great Hall is now overgrown with ivy, but the walls can be climbed to disclose a glorious view of the cathedral.

The ancient Ermine Street of the Romans enters Lincoln through the best preserved piece of Roman masonry in England, the Newport Gate of two arches, where on either hand may be seen fragments of the old wall. Near the south-east corner of this originally walled area William the Conqueror built Lincoln Castle, with its gate facing the cathedral. The ruins are well preserved, and parts of the site are now occupied by the jail and court-house. Within this old castle King Stephen besieged the empress Maud, but though he captured it she escaped. Her partisans recaptured the place, and Stephen in the second siege was made a prisoner. It suffered many sieges in the troubled times afterwards. In the Civil War the townspeople supported the king, but being attacked they retreated to the castle and cathedral, which were stormed and taken by the Parliamentary army. Afterwards the castle was dismantled. One of the interesting remains in Lincoln is the “Jew’s House,” the home in the Hebrew quarter of a Jewess who was hanged for clipping coin in the reign of Edward I. But the noble cathedral is the crowning glory of this interesting old city, the massive structure, with its three surmounting towers standing on high, being visible for many miles across the country around.

NOTTINGHAM.

We will now cross over the border from Lincoln into Nottinghamshire, and, seeking the valley of the Trent, find upon the steep brow of a cliff by the river the ancient castle of Nottingham, which is now surrounded by the busy machinery of the hosiery-weavers. When it was founded no one accurately knows, but it is believed to antedate the Roman occupation of the island. As long ago as the tenth century there was a bridge across the Trent at Snodengahame meaning the “dwelling among the rocks” as it was then called, and afterwards the town suffered from the Danes. It is also suffered during the troubled reign of King Stephen. The castle was built by one of the Peverils soon after the Norman Conquest, and was frequently the abode of kings. It was here that Roger Mortimer was seized prior to being tried and hanged in London. King David of Scotland and Owen Glendower of Wales were held prisoners in Nottingham Castle, and from it Richard III. advanced to meet his fate on Bosworth Field, while Charles I. set up his standard and gathered his army at Nottingham at the opening of the Civil Wars, the blowing down of the standard by a gale on Castle Hill being taken as ominous of the unfortunate termination of the conflict. The old castle, which has fallen into ruins, subsequently passed into possession of the Duke of Newcastle, who cleared away almost the whole of the ancient structure and built a house upon the site. The city was noted for its manufactures as early as the reign of King John, and the hand-knitting of stockings was introduced in the sixteenth century. Previously to that time hosiery had been cut out of cloth, with the seams sewed up the same as outer clothing. As early as 1589 a machine for weaving was invented, but failing to reap a profit from it, the inventor, a clergyman, took it to Paris, where he afterwards died broken-hearted. Ultimately, his apprentices brought the machines back to Nottingham, improved them, and prospered. Many improvements followed. Jedediah Strutt produced the “Derby ribbed hose;” then the warp-loom was invented in the last century, and the bobbin-traverse net in 1809. The knitting-machines have been steadily improved, and now hosiery-making is carried on in extensive factories that give an individuality to the town. The rapidity with which stockings are reeled off the machines is astonishing. An ordinary stocking is made in four pieces, which are afterwards sewed or knitted together by another machine. Some of the looms, however, knit the legs in one piece, and may be seen working off almost endless woollen tubes, which are afterwards divided into convenient lengths. Fancy hosiery is knitted according to patterns, the setting up of which requires great skill. Vast amounts of lace are woven, and in the factories female labor preponderates. The upper town of Nottingham, clustering around the castle on the river-crag, has a picturesque aspect from the valley below. Among the features of the lower town is the market-place, a triangular area of slightly over four acres, where the market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the “Nottingham lambs,” and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood.

SOUTHWELL.

We will now go down the valley of the Trent below Nottingham, and, mounting the gentle hills that border Sherwood Forest, come to the Roman station, Ad Pontem, of which the Venerable Bede was the historian. Here Paulinus was baptized, and it was early made the site of an episcopal see. The name was Sudwell at the Norman Conquest, and then it became Southwell, and the noted minster was one of the favorite residences of the Archbishop of York. It is a quiet, old-fashioned place, with plenty of comfortable residences, and in a large churchyard on ground sloping away from the main street, with the ruins of the archbishop’s palace near by, is Southwell Minster. There are few finer examples of a Norman building remaining in England, the three towers, nave, transepts, and chapter-house forming a majestic group. An enormous western window has been inserted by later architects, rather to the detriment of the gable, and this produces a singular effect. The interior of the minster is magnificent. The Norman nave is of eight bays with semicircular arches, surmounted by a triforium of rows of arches almost equal to those below, and rising from piers with clustered side-columns. It is nearly three-fourths the height of the lower stage, and this produces a grand effect. The flat roof is modern, it and the bells having been replaced after the church was burned in the last century. The ruins of the archiepiscopal palace, erected six hundred years ago, have been availed of in one portion for a dwelling-house. Wolsey built part of it, and beneath the battlemented wall enclosing the garden there was not long ago found the skeleton of a soldier in armor, a relic of the Civil Wars. The name of the town is derived from its wells. The South Well is a short distance outside the limits in a little park. The Holy Well, which was inside the minster, is now covered up. Lady Well was just outside the church-walls, but a clergyman fell into it one dark night and was drowned, and it too has been closed. St. Catherine’s Well was surmounted by a chapel, and is in repute as a cure for rheumatism. The ancient inn of the Saracen’s Head in Southwell, not far from the minster on the main street, witnessed the closing scene of the Civil War. After the battle of Naseby the Scotch had reached Southwell, and Montreville, an agent of Cardinal Mazarin, came there to negotiate on behalf of King Charles in 1646. The Scotch commissioners had rooms in the archiepiscopal palace, and Montreville lodged at the Saracen’s Head. After the negotiations had proceeded for some time, the king in disguise quitted Oxford in April, and after a devious journey by way of Newark appeared at Montreville’s lodgings on May 6th. On the south side of the inn was an apartment divided into a dining-room and bedroom, which the king occupied, and in the afternoon, after dining with the Scotch commissioners, he placed himself in their hands, and was sent a prisoner to their head-quarters. The canny Scots before leaving stripped the lead from the roof of the palace, and it afterwards fell into ruin, so that Cromwell, who arrived subsequently, found it uninhabitable, and then occupied the king’s room at the Saracen’s Head, his horses being stabled in Southwell Minster. Southwell since has had an uneventful history.

THE DUKERIES.

Nor far away is the well-known Sherwood Forest, wherein in the olden time lived the famous forester and bandit Robin Hood. Roaming among its spreading oaks with his robber band, he was not infrequently a visitor to the bordering towns, sometimes for pleasure, but oftener for “business.” Who Robin was, or exactly when he lived, no one seems to know. He is associated alike with the unsettled times of Kings John and Richard, with Henry V. and with Jack Cade, but so much mystery surrounds all reports of him that some do not hesitate to declare Robin Hood a myth. But whoever he was, his memory and exploits live in many a ballad sung along the banks of the Trent and in the towns and villages of Sherwood Forest. His abiding-place is now divided up into magnificent estates, the most famous of them being known as “The Dukeries.” One of them, near Ollerton, is Thoresby Hall, the splendid home of the Earl of Manvers, a park that is ten miles in circumference. North of this is the stately seat of the Duke of Newcastle Clumber Park charmingly situated between Ollerton and Worksop. From the entrance-lodge a carriage-drive of over a mile through the well-wooded grounds leads up to the elegant yet homelike mansion. It is of modern construction, having been built in 1770 and received important additions since. Before that time the park was a tract of wild woodland, but the then Duke of Newcastle improved it, and constructed an extensive lake, covering ninety acres, at a cost of $35,000. It was originally intended for a shooting-box, but this was elaborately extended. In the centre of the west front is a colonnade, and between the mansion and the lake are fine gardens ornamented by a large fountain. The owner of Clumber is the lineal representative of the family of Pelham-Clinton which first appeared prominently in the reign of Edward I. and is Henry Pelham Alexander Pelham-Clinton, sixth Duke of Newcastle. Clumber is rich in ornaments, among them being four ancient Roman altars, but the most striking feature is the full-rigged ship which with a consort rests upon the placid bosom of the lake.

Adjoining Clumber Park is the most celebrated of “The Dukeries,” Welbeck Abbey, which is one of the remarkable estates of England, a place peculiar to itself. The mansion is about four miles from Worksop, and the surrounding park contains a grand display of fine old trees, beneath which roam extensive herds of deer. Welbeck Abbey of White Canons was founded in the reign of Henry II., and dedicated to St. James. After the dissolution it was granted to Richard Whalley, and subsequently passed into possession of Sir Charles Cavendish, a son of the famous Bess of Hardwicke, whose grandson converted the abbey into an elaborate mansion, leaving little of the original religious building standing. The present house was constructed in the seventeenth century, its old riding-house being completed in 1623, and William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, who built it, was noted as the most accomplished horseman of his time. For several generations Welbeck remained in possession of the Dukes of Newcastle, until in the last century an only daughter and the heiress of the abbey married William Bentinck, the Duke of Portland, thus carrying the estate over to that family, which now possesses it. The founder of this ducal house came over from Holland as a page of honor with King William III. The present owner, who has just succeeded to the title, is the sixth Duke of Portland. The chief feature of the original Welbeck, the old riding-house, remains, but is no longer used for that purpose. It is a grand hall, one hundred and seventy-seven feet long, with a massive open-work timber roof of admirable design. The mansion is full of fine apartments, many of them elaborately decorated, but it is not from these that the estate gets its present fame. The late Duke of Portland, who was unmarried, was an eccentric man, and he developed a talent for burrowing underground that made his house one of the most remarkable in England and consumed enormous sums of money. The libraries of Welbeck, five superb rooms opening into each other, a spacious hall adjoining, one hundred and fifty-nine feet long, the stables, large gardens, hothouses, lodges, and other apartments, are all underground. They have glass roofs of magnificent design. They are approached from and connected with the rest of the mansion by subterranean passages, and, being lofty rooms, the cost of this deep digging and of the necessary drainage and other adjuncts may be imagined. The new riding house, the finest in existence, and also underground, but lighted by an arched glass roof, is three hundred and seventy-nine by one hundred and six feet, and fifty feet high. It is elaborately ornamented, and at night is lighted by nearly eight thousand gas-jets. Near it are the extensive hunting-stables, coach-houses, and that marked feature of Welbeck, the covered “gallop,” one thousand and seventy-two feet long, with large “hanging rooms” at either end: these too are covered with glass, so as to get their light from the top. The whole place abounds in subterranean apartments and passages, while above ground are extensive gardens and dairies. In the gardens are the peach-wall, one thousand feet long, a similar range of pine-houses, a fruit-arcade of ornamental iron arches stretching nearly a quarter of a mile, with apple trees trained on one side and pear trees on the other, and extensive beds of flowers and plants. To construct and maintain all this curious magnificence there are workshops on a grand scale. This eccentric duke, who practically denied himself to the world, and for years devoted his time to carrying on these remarkable works at an enormous cost, employed over two thousand persons in burrowing out the bowels of the earth and making these grand yet strange apartments. When finished he alone could enjoy them, for Welbeck was for a long time a sealed book to the outer world. But the eccentric duke died, as all men must, and his successor opened Welbeck to view and to the astonishment of all who saw it. A few months ago the Prince of Wales and a noble company visited the strange yet magnificent structure, and then for the first time the amazed assemblage explored this underground palace in Sherwood Forest, and when their wonder was satisfied they turned on the myriads of gas-jets, and amid a blaze of artificial light indulged in a ball an unwonted scene for the weird old abbey of the eccentric and solitary duke. Like the fairies and mermaids of old in their underground palaces, the prince and his friends at Welbeck right merrily

“Held their courtly revels down, down below.”

Also in this neighborhood is Newstead Abbey, the ancient seat of the Byrons. It is about eleven miles from Nottingham, and was founded by the Augustinians in the time of Henry II. In 1540 it came into possession of Sir John Byron, and a century later was held for King Charles. The poet Byron’s bedroom remains almost as he left it, and on the lawn is the monument to his favorite dog, “Boatswain.” The abbey also contains several relics of Livingstone, the African explorer. Near it is Robin Hood’s Cave, and the neighborhood is full of remains of the famous chieftain, such as his Hill and his Chair, and Fountain Dale where Robin encountered Friar Tuck.

NEWARK.

Descending again to the banks of the Trent, we come to the causeway which carries over the flat meadows the Great North Road, the Roman military route to the north of England, which made it necessary to build a castle to hold the keys to its passage across the river. We are told that Egbert built the earliest fortress here, but the Danes destroyed it. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, rebuilt it, and gave the castle the name of the “New Work.” But it too fell into decay, and in 1123 the present castle was built, which though much altered and afterwards sadly ruined, has come down to the present time. It was here that, after his army was swamped in the Wash, King John died, some say by poison, but the prosaic historian attributes the sad result to over-indulgence in “unripe peaches and new beer.” In the Civil War it was a royal stronghold and sent King Charles large numbers of recruits. Then it was besieged by Cromwell, but stoutly resisted, and Prince Rupert by some brilliant manoeuvres relieved it. Finally, the king sought refuge within its walls after the defeat at Naseby, and here he was besieged by the Scotch until his voluntary surrender to them at Southwell, when two days afterwards, by his order, Newark capitulated to his captors. The Parliamentary forces afterwards dismantled the castle, and it fell into decay, but it has recently been restored as well as possible, and the site converted into a public garden. Within the town of Newark are several objects of interest. At the Saracen’s Head Inn, which has existed from the time of Edward III., Sir Walter Scott tells us that Jeanie Deans slept on her journey from Midlothian to London. The most striking part of the town is the market-square, which is very large, and is surrounded by old and interesting houses, several of them projecting completely over the footwalks, and having the front walls supported upon columns a most picturesque arrangement. One of these old houses has windows in continuous rows in the upper stories, having between them wooden beams and figures moulded in plaster. Through the openings between these old houses can be seen the church, which is one of the finest parish churches in this district, so celebrated for the magnificence of its religious houses. Surmounting its Early English tower is a spire of later date. The plan is cruciform, but with very short transepts, not extending beyond the aisles, which are wide and stretch the entire length of the church. There is a fine roof of carved oak, and some of the stained glass and interior paintings are highly prized. It was at Newark that Thomas Magnus lived and founded the grammar-school at which the antiquarian Dr. Stukeley was educated, and afterwards the famous Warburton, who became Bishop of Gloucester.

In Newark, about three hundred years ago, there was a tavern called the “Talbot Arms,” named in honor of the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose countess was Mary, daughter of the famous Bess of Hardwicke by her second husband, Sir William Cavendish. Between the Talbots and the neighboring family of Stanhopes at Shelford there was a feud, which resulted in the Stanhopes defacing the tavern-sign. This was not taken notice of by the Earl of Shrewsbury, but the quarrel was assumed by the imperious countess and her brother, Sir Charles Cavendish. They despatched a messenger to Sir Thomas Stanhope, accusing him and his son of the insult, and declaring him a “reprobate and his son John a rascal.” Then a few days later they sent a formal defiance: the Stanhopes avoided a duel as long as possible until they began to be posted as cowards, and then, having gone to London, whither Cavendish followed them, a duel was arranged with the younger Stanhope at Lambeth Bridge. They met after several delays, when it was found that Stanhope had his doublet so thickly quilted as to be almost impenetrable to a sword-thrust. Then there was a new dispute, and it was proposed they should fight in their shirts, but this Stanhope declined, pleading a cold. Cavendish offered to lend him a waistcoat, but this too was declined; then Cavendish waived all objections to the doublet and proposed to fight anyhow, but the seconds interposed, and the duel was put off. Stanhope was then again posted as a coward, and he and his adherents were hustled in the streets of London. A few days later Stanhope and his party were attacked in Fleet Street by the Talbots, and one of the former faction mortally wounded. The feud went on six years, when one day, Cavendish, riding near his home in Nottinghamshire with three attendants, was attacked by Stanhope and twenty horsemen. He fought bravely, and was badly wounded, but killed four and wounded two others of his opponents, when, reinforcements appearing, the Stanhope party fled, leaving six horses and nearly all their hats and weapons behind them. But all feuds have an end, and this one ultimately exhausted itself, the families within a century being united in marriage.

HULL AND BEVERLEY.

Following the Trent down to the Humber, and turning towards the sea, we come to the noted seaport of Hull, or, as it is best known in those parts, Kingston-upon-Hull. While not possessing great attractions for the ordinary tourist, yet Hull ranks as the third seaport of England, being second only to London and Liverpool. It is the great packet-station for the north of Europe, with steam lines leading to Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia, and the Baltic, most of the English trade with those countries being centred at Hull. It is a town of extreme activity, its docks being all the time crowded with shipping, and its location, practically upon an island, with the river Humber on the south, the river Hull upon the east, and docks upon the northern and western sides, giving it every maritime convenience. The docks, though inferior to those of Liverpool, are the chief feature of the town. The Hull River itself forms a natural dock about a mile and a half long, and from this a chain of other docks leads through the warehouses and the town to the Humber. Hull possesses the Trinity House, one of the three ancient establishments in England the others being at London and Newcastle which were founded first as a religious fraternity in the fourteenth century, and became afterwards establishments for the relief of distressed and decayed seamen and their families. The present Trinity House building was erected in the last century. The chief ornament of Hull is the Wilberforce Monument, a pillar of sandstone seventy-two feet high, erected about a half century ago, and surmounted by a statue of the celebrated philanthropist. He was born on High Street August 24, 1759, this being the most important thoroughfare in ancient Hull, but now a narrow and inconvenient lane following the right bank of the Hull River. Here were in former days the houses of the great Hull merchants, and the Wilberforce House is about halfway down the street. It is a curious specimen of brickwork, of a style said to have been imported from Flanders in the reign of William and Mary. It is a low, broad house with a surmounting tower over the doorway. Hull has little else of interest in the way of buildings. Its Holy Trinity Church, in the market-place, is the largest parish church in England, having recently been thoroughly restored, and the Town Hall, built in the Italian style, with a clock-tower, is its finest edifice of modern construction.

We have now come into Yorkshire, and a few minutes’ ride northward by railway along the valley of the Hull River brings the visitor to Beverley, an old-fashioned Yorkshire town of considerable antiquity, eight miles from the seaport. This was anciently a walled town, but of the entrance-gates only one survives, the North Bar, of the time of Edward III. It is a good specimen of brick architecture, with mouldings and niches upon the surface and battlements at the top. This is a favorite old town for the retired merchant and tradesman who wish to pass the declining years of life in quiet, and it contains many ancient buildings of interest. Several of these are clustered around the picturesque market-square, which is an enclosure of about four acres, and contains a quaint cross, a relic of the time when it was customary to build market-crosses. These ancient crosses, which were practically canopies erected over a raised platform, were generally used as pulpits by the preachers when conducting religious services in the open air. Sometimes they were memorials of the dead. We are told that there were formerly five thousand of these crosses of various kinds in England, but most of them were destroyed in the Civil Wars. At these old crosses proclamations used to be read and tolls collected from the market-people. The covered market-cross at Beverley was one of the last that was erected. The name of this interesting town is said to be derived from Beaver Lake, the site having at one time been surrounded by lakes that were formed by the overflowing of the Humber, in which beavers lived in great numbers. The Beverley Minster is an attractive Gothic church, and from the tops of its towers there is an excellent view over the rich and almost level valley through which the Hull River flows. Leconfield Castle, in the suburbs, was an ancient residence of the Percys, of which the moat alone remains.

SHEFFIELD.

Let us now ascend the estuary of the Humber, and, proceeding up its numerous tributaries, seek out various places of interest in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And first, ascending the river Don, we come to that great manufacturing centre of the “Black Country,” sacred to coal and iron, Sheffield. Murray’s Guide tells us that while Sheffield is one of the largest and most important towns in Yorkshire, it is “beyond all question the blackest, dirtiest, and least respectable.” Horace Walpole in the last century wrote that Sheffield is “one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation.” It is a crowded city, with narrow and badly-arranged streets, having few handsome public buildings, but bristling with countless tall chimneys belching forth clouds of heavy smoke that hang like a pall over the place. The Don and its tributaries have their beds defiled, and altogether the smoky city is in unpleasant contrast with the beauty of the surrounding country. But, unfortunately, an omelette cannot be made without breaking eggs, nor can Sheffield make cutlery without smoke and bad odors, all of which have amazingly multiplied within the present century, its population having grown from forty-five thousand in 1801 to over three hundred thousand now. It stands at the confluence of the rivers Don and Sheaf, its name being connected with the latter. Three smaller streams join them within the city and are utilized for water-power. The factories spread over the lowlands of the Don valley, and mount up its western slopes towards the moorlands that stretch away to Derbyshire; it is therefore as hilly as it is grimy. Sheffield at the time of the Norman Conquest was the manor of Hallam, which has passed through various families, until, in the seventeenth century, it became by marriage the property of the Duke of Norfolk. The present duke is lord of the manor of Sheffield, and derives a large income from his vast estates there. Sheffield Castle once stood at the confluence of the two rivers, but all traces of it have disappeared. The manor-house, which has been restored, dates from the time of Henry VIII. It is three stories high, and a turret staircase leads from floor to floor, and finally out upon the flat roof.

We are told that Sheffield manufactures of metals began in the days of the Romans, and also that Sheffield-made arrows fell thickly at Crecy and Agincourt. Richmond used them with effect at Bosworth Field, and in the sixteenth century we read of Sheffield knives and whittles. Almost the only ancient building of any note the city has is the parish church, but it is so much patched and altered that there is difficulty in distinguishing the newer from the older parts. The chief among the modern buildings is the Cutlers’ Hall, a Grecian structure erected for the Cutlers Company in 1833, and enlarged a few years ago by the addition of a handsome apartment. This company, the autocrats of Sheffield, was founded in 1624 by act of Parliament with two express objects to keep a check upon the number of apprentices and to examine into the quality of Sheffield wares, all of which were to be stamped with the warranty of their excellence. But recently the restrictive powers of this company have been swept away, and it is now little more than a grantor of trade-marks and an excuse for an annual banquet. Sheffield has extensive markets and parks, and the Duke of Norfolk is conspicuous in his gifts of this character to the city; but overtopping all else are the enormous works, which make everything into which iron and steel can be converted, from armor-plating and railway-rails down to the most delicate springs and highly-tempered cutlery. Their products go to every part of the world, and are of enormous value and importance.

WAKEFIELD.

Upon the Calder, another tributary of the Humber, northward of the Don, is the town of Wakefield, which, until the recent great growth of Leeds, was the head-quarters of the Yorkshire clothing-trade. It was here that in the Wars of the Roses the battle of Wakefield was fought on the closing day of the year 1460. The Duke of York wished to remain at Wakefield on the defensive against Queen Margaret’s Lancastrian army of twenty thousand men, for his forces were barely one-fourth that number. The Earl of Salisbury, however, prevailed on him to advance to meet the queen, and he probably had no idea of the strength she had to oppose him. The duke was soon cut off, and was among the first to fall, his head having afterwards been put on the Micklegate bar at York. Scenes of great barbarity followed: the Duke of York’s son, the Earl of Rutland, was murdered with shocking cruelty after the battle on Wakefield Bridge. Young Rutland’s brother, afterwards Edward IV., erected a chapel on the bridge on the spot where he was slain, in order that prayer might be constantly said in it for the repose of the souls of the followers of the White Rose who were slain in the battle. It covers thirty by twenty-four feet, and has recently been restored by a successor of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield.” Near the bridge the spot is pointed out where the Duke of York was killed, now marked by two willows. There is a fine old three-gabled house in Wakefield which was built about the same date as the battle was fought, and is now divided into small shops. It is a good specimen of the ancient black-and-white timbered house, though the carved work on the front has been considerably defaced. It stands in the Kirkgate, which runs down to the Calder, and is known locally as the “Six Chimblies.”

LEEDS.

About nine miles north of Wakefield is the great commercial capital of Yorkshire and centre of the cloth-trade. Leeds, built in the valley of the river Aire. Twelve hundred years ago this region, embracing the valleys of the Aire and the Calder, was the independent kingdom of Loidis. It was soon overrun and conquered, however, by the Anglian hosts, and ultimately the conquerors built here the monastery that in Bede’s time was presided over by the abbot Thrydwulf. This stood on the site of the present parish church, and in the eighth century it was called “the monastery at Leeta.” It stood at the crossing of two important Roman roads in the midst of a forest. This was the beginning of the great city, for soon a hamlet gathered around the monastery, though long since the woods, and indeed all green things, were driven away from Leeds. The village was laid waste by William the Conqueror, and at the time of the Domesday Book it was one of one hundred and fifty manors held by Baron Ilbert de Lacy, whose possessions stretched halfway across Yorkshire. He built a castle at Leeds, which was afterwards a prison of Richard II., but has long since disappeared. In 1530, Leland described Leeds as “a pretty market-town, as large as Bradford, but not so quick as it.” Charles I. incorporated it, and the cloth-market was then of some importance. In the Civil War it was taken by the Royalists, and afterwards retaken by Fairfax for the Parliament in a short, sharp struggle, in which a clergyman named Scholfield distinguished himself by his valor, and “by his triumphant psalm-singing” as work after work was captured from the enemy. Flemish workmen brought cloth-making into this part of Yorkshire as early as the reign of Edward III., and two centuries ago the cloth-makers prospered so much that they held a market twice a week at Leeds on a long, narrow bridge crossing the Aire. They laid their cloth on the battlements of the bridge and on benches below, and the country clothiers could buy for four cents from the innkeepers “a pot of ale, a noggin of porridge, and a trencher of boiled or roast beef.” This substantial supply was known as the “brigg (bridge)-shot,” and from the bridge ran the street known as the Briggate, which has since developed into one of the finest avenues of the city.

Leeds began to grow in the last century, when it became the chief mart of the woollen clothiers, while the worsted-trade gathered about Bradford. These still remain the centres of the two great divisions of the woollen industry, which is the characteristic business of Yorkshire. The factories began then to appear at Leeds, and in the present century the city has made astonishing advances, growing from fifty-three thousand population in 1801 until it exceeds three hundred thousand now. The great cloth-mart to-day is for miles a region of tall chimneys and barrack-like edifices, within which steadily roars machinery that represents some of the most ingenious skill of the human race. Within this hive of busy industry there still linger some memorials of the past among its hundreds of cloth-mills. Turning out of the broad Briggate into the quiet street of St. John, we come to the church built there by the piety of the wealthy clothier John Harrison, and consecrated in 1634. St. John’s Church, which he built and presented to the town because the older parish church could scarce hold half the inhabitants, consists of a long nave and chancel, with a south aisle. It is of Gothic architecture, and much of the ancient woodwork, including the pulpit, remains. Arabesques moulded in white plaster fill the panels between the main roof-beams. This interesting church has undergone little historical change excepting the recent rebuilding of the tower. John Harrison is entombed in the church. The old parish church in Kirkgate has been within a few years entirely rebuilt. The other churches of Leeds, like this one, are all modern, and it also has an imposing Town Hall, opened by the queen in 1858, in which are held the annual musical festivals, which have attained much importance. A statue of the Duke of Wellington stands in the open square in front. The two Cloth Halls of Leeds, the Mixed Cloth Hall and the White Cloth Hall, where the business of selling was at first carried on, are now little used, the trade being conducted directly between the manufacturer and the clothier. Some of the mills are of enormous size, and they include every operation from the raw material to the finished fabric. But, with all their ingenious machinery, the cloth-weavers have not yet been able to supersede the use of the teasel, by which the loose fibres of wool are raised to the surface to form, when cut and sheared, the pile or nap. These teasels, which are largely grown in Yorkshire, are fastened into a cylinder, and at least three thousand of them will be consumed in “teasling” a piece of cloth forty yards long.

BOLTON ABBEY.

North of the valley of the Aire is the valley of the Wharfe River, and, following that pleasant stream a short distance up, we come to Rumbald’s Moor and the water-cure establishments of the town of Ilkley, which is an array of villas and terraces spreading up the hillside from the southern bank of the river. The neighborhood is full of attractive rock-and river-scenery. In the suburbs is the palace of Ben Rhydding, built in the Scottish baronial style, with the Cow and Calf Rocks overhanging the adjacent park. The Panorama Rock also commands a wide prospect, while Rumbald’s Moor itself is elevated over thirteen hundred feet. A few miles from Ilkley are the celebrated ruins of Bolton Abbey, standing on a patch of open ground, around which the Wharfe curves, but with much woods clustering near the ruins and on the river-bank. Bolton stands in a deep valley, and on the opposite side of the river rises the steep rock of Simon’s Seat, sixteen hundred feet high. The architecture of the abbey is of various styles, the west front coming down to us from the reign of Henry VIII., while its gateway is much older. There is no south aisle to the abbey, and at present the nave and north aisle are roofed in and serve as the parish church. The east end of this aisle is divided from the rest by an ancient wooden screen so as to form a chapel, and beneath this is the vault where the former owners of Bolton the Claphams and Mauleverers were buried. Some years ago, when the floor was being repaired, their coffins were found standing upright, whereof the poet tells us:

“Through the chinks in the fractured floor Look down and see a grisly sight A vault where the bodies are buried upright There, face by face and hand by hand. The Claphams and Mauleverers stand.”

The ruins of the north transept are in fair preservation, and the choir has a beautiful arcade, while through the openings beneath there is a charming view of the green-bordered river and of the hills beyond. Bolton Hall, which was the ancient gateway of the abbey, is opposite its western front, and is one of the favorite homes in the shooting season of the Duke of Devonshire, its owner.

A pleasant walk of two miles along the Wharfe brings us to the famous Strid, where the river is hemmed in between ledges of rock, and the scene of the rushing waters is very fine, especially after a rain. Beautiful paths wind along the hillsides and through the woods, and here, where the ruins of Bardon Tower rise high above the valley, is a favorite resort of artists. At the most contracted part of the rocky river-passage the water rushes through a narrow trench cut out for about sixty yards length, within which distance it falls ten feet. The noise here is almost deafening, and at the narrowest part the distance across is barely five feet. It looks easy to jump over, but from the peculiar position of the slippery rocks and the confusing noise of the rushing water it is a dangerous leap.

“This striding-place is called ‘the Strid.’ A name which it took of yore. A thousand years hath it borne that name, And shall a thousand more.”

It was here that young Romilly, the “Boy of Egremont,” was drowned several centuries ago, the story of his death being told by Wordsworth in his poem of “The Force of Prayer.” He had been ranging through Bardon Wood, holding a greyhound in a leash, and tried to leap across the Strid:

“He sprang in glee; for what cared he, That the river was strong and the rocks were steep? But the greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap.

“The boy is in the arms of Wharfe, And strangled by a merciless force; For nevermore was young Romilly seen Till he rose a lifeless corse.”

It is said that his disconsolate mother built Bolton Abbey to commemorate the death of her only son, and placed it in one of the most picturesque spots in England.

RIPON AND FOUNTAINS.

Proceeding still farther northward from the charming vale of Wharfe, we come to the valley of the Ure, which flows into the Ouse, a main tributary of the Humber, and to the famous cathedral-town of Ripon. This is a place of venerable antiquity, for it has been over twelve centuries since a band of Scotch monks came from Melrose to establish a monastery on the sloping headland above the Ure. A portion of the ancient church then founded is incorporated in the present Ripon Minster, which was built seven centuries ago. It was burned and partly injured by the Scotch in the fourteenth century, and subsequently the central tower and greater part of the nave were rebuilt. It has recently been entirely restored. The cathedral consists of a nave, with aisles extending the full width of the western front, and rather broad for its length; the transepts are short. Parallel to the choir on the southern side is a chapter-house. It is one of the smallest cathedrals in England, being less than two hundred and ninety feet long, and other buildings so encompass it as to prevent a good near view. There is an ample churchyard, but the shrine of St. Wilfrid, the founder, whose relics were the great treasure of the church, has long since disappeared. It appears that in ancient times there was great quarrelling over the possession of his bones, and that Archbishop Odo, declaring his grave to be neglected, carried them off to Canterbury, but after much disputing a small portion of the saint’s remains were restored to Ripon. Beneath the corner of the nave is the singular crypt known as Wilfrid’s Needle. A long passage leads to a cell from which a narrow window opens into another passage. Through this window we are told that women whose virtue was doubted were made to crawl, and if they stuck by the way were adjudged guilty. This is the oldest part of the church, and is regarded as the most perfect existing relic of the earliest age of Christianity in Yorkshire. The cathedral contains some interesting monuments, one of which demonstrates that epitaph-writing flourished in times agone at Ripon. It commemorates, as “a faint emblem of his refined taste,” William Weddell of Newby, “in whom every virtue that ennobles the human mind was united with every elegance that adorns it.”

In the neighborhood of Ripon is the world-renowned Fountains Abbey, of which the remains are in excellent preservation, and stand in a beautiful situation on the verge of the fine estate of the Marquis of Ripon, Studley Royal. The gates of this park are about two miles from Ripon, the road winding among the trees, beneath which herds of deer are browsing, and leading up to the mansion, in front of which is an attractive scene. The little river Skell, on its way to the Ure, emerges from a glen, and is banked up to form a lake, from which it tumbles over a pretty cascade. The steep bank opposite is covered with trees. John Aislabie, who had been chancellor of the exchequer, laid out this park in 1720, and such repute did his ornamental works attain that Studley was regarded as the most embellished spot in the North of England. Ultimately, through heiresses, it passed into the hands of the present owner. The pleasure-grounds were laid out in the Dutch style then in vogue, and the slopes of the valley were terraced, planted with evergreens, and adorned with statues. Modern landscape-gardening has somewhat varied the details, but the original design remains. In the gardens are the Octagon Tower, perched upon a commanding knoll, the Temple of Piety, near the water-side, and an arbor known as Anne Boleyn’s Seat, which commands a superb view over Fountains Dale. Let us enter this pretty glen, which gradually narrows, becomes more abrupt and rocky, and as we go along the Skell leads us from the woods out upon a level grassy meadow, at the end of which stand the gray ruins of the famous Cistercian abbey. The buildings spread completely across the glen to its craggy sides on either hand. On the right there is only room for a road to pass between the transept and the limestone rock which rears on high the trees rooted in its crannies, whose branches almost brush the abbey’s stately tower. On the other side is the little river, with the conventual buildings carried across it in more than one place, the water flowing through a vaulted tunnel. These buildings extend to the bases of the opposite crags. The ruins are of great size, and it does not take much imagination to restore the glen to its aspect when the abbey was in full glory seven or eight hundred years ago. Its founders came hither almost as exiles from York, and began building the abbey in the twelfth century, but it was barely completed when Henry VIII. forced the dissolution of the monasteries. It was very rich, and furnished rare plunder when the monks were compelled to leave it. The close or immediate grounds of the abbey contained about eighty acres, entered by a gate-house to the westward of the church, the ruins of which can still be seen. Near by is an old mill alongside the Skell, and a picturesque bridge crosses the stream, while on a neighboring knoll are some ancient yews which are believed to have sheltered the earliest settlers, and are called the “Seven Sisters.” But, unfortunately, only two now remain, gnarled and twisted, with decaying trunks and falling limbs ruins in fact that are as venerable as Fountains Abbey itself. Botanists say they are twelve hundred years old, and that they were full-grown trees when the exiles from York first encamped alongside the Skell.

Entering the close, the ruins of the abbey church are seen in better preservation than the other buildings. The roof is gone, for its woodwork was used to melt down the lead by zealous Reformers in the sixteenth century, and green grass has replaced the pavement. The ruins disclose a noble temple, the tower rising one hundred and sixty-eight feet. In the eastern transept is the beautiful “Chapel of the Nine Altars” with its tall and slender columns, some of the clustering shafts having fallen. For some distance southward and eastward from the church extend the ruins of the other convent-buildings. In former times they were used as a stone-quarry for the neighborhood, many of the walls being levelled to the ground, but since the last century they have been scrupulously preserved. The plan is readily traced, for excavations have been made to better display the ruins. South of the nave of the church was the cloister-court. On one side was the transept and chapter-house, and on the other a long corridor supporting the dormitory. This was one hundred yards long, extending across the river, and abutting against the crags on the other side. South of the cloister-court was the refectory and other apartments. To the eastward was a group of buildings terminating in a grand house for the abbot, which also bridged the river. All these are now in picturesque ruin, the long corridor, with its vaulted roof supported by a central row of columns with broad arches, being considered one of the most impressive religious remains in England. One of the chief uses to which the Fountains Abbey stone-quarry was devoted was the building, in the reign of James I., of a fine Jacobean mansion as the residence for its then owner, Sir Stephen Proctor. This is Fountains Hall, an elaborate structure of that period which stands near the abbey gateway, and to a great extent atones, by its quaint attractiveness, for the vandalism that despoiled the abbey to furnish materials for its construction. In fact, the mournful reflection is always uppermost in viewing the remains of this famous place that it would have been a grand old ruin could it have been preserved, but the spoilers who plundered it for their own profit are said to have discovered, in the fleeting character of the riches thus obtained, that ill-gotten gains never prosper.

RICHMOND CASTLE.

Proceeding northward from Ripon, and crossing over into the valley of the river Swale, we reach one of the most picturesquely located towns of England Richmond, whose great castle is among the best English remains of the Norman era. The river flows over a broken and rocky bed around the base of a cliff, and crowning the precipice above is the great castle, magnificent even in decay. It was founded in the reign of William the Conqueror by Alan the Red, who was created Earl of Richmond, and it covers a space of about five acres on a rock projecting over the river, the prominent tower of the venerable keep being surrounded by walls and buildings. A lane leads up from the market-place of the town to the castle-gate, alongside of which are Robin Hood’s Tower and the Golden Tower, the latter named from a tradition of a treasure being once found there. The Scolland’s Hall, a fine specimen of Norman work, adjoins this tower. The keep is one hundred feet high and furnished with walls eleven feet thick, time having had little effect upon its noble structure, one of the most perfect Norman keep-towers remaining in England. There is a grand view from the battlements over the romantic valley of the Swale. In the village is an old gray tower, the only remains of a Franciscan monastery founded in the thirteenth century, and the ruins of Easby Abbey, dating from the twelfth century, are not far away; its granary is still in use. The valley of the Swale may be pursued for a long distance, furnishing constant displays of romantic scenery, or, if that is preferred, excellent trout-fishing.

YORK.

From the high hills in the neighborhood of Fountains Dale there is a magnificent view over the plain of York, and we will now proceed down the valley of the Ouse to the venerable city that the Romans called Eboracum, and which is the capital of a county exceeding in extent many kingdoms and principalities of Europe. This ancient British stronghold has given its name to the metropolis of the New World, but the modern Babylon on the Hudson has far outstripped the little city on the equally diminutive Ouse. It was Ebrane, the king of the Brigantes, who is said to have founded York, but so long ago that he is believed a myth. Whatever its origin, a settlement was there before the Christian era, but nothing certain is known of it beyond the fact that it existed when the Romans invaded Britain and captured York, with other strongholds, in the first century of the Christian era. Eboracum was made the head-quarters of their fifth legion, and soon became the chief city of a district now rich in the relics of the Roman occupation, their dead being still found thickly buried around the town. Portions of the walls of Eboracum remain, among them being that remarkable relic, the tower, polygonal in plan, which is known as the Multangular Tower, and which marks the south-western angle of the ancient Roman city. Not far away are the dilapidated ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey, once one of the wealthiest and proudest religious houses in the North of England, but with little now left but portions of the foundations, a gateway, and the north and west walls of the nave. This abbey was founded in the eleventh century, and it was from here that the exiled monks who built Fountains Abbey were driven out. This ruin has been in its present condition for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

For over three centuries Eboracum was a great Roman city. Here came the emperor Severus and died in 211, his body being cremated and the ashes conveyed to Rome. When the empire was divided, Britain fell to the share of Constantius Chlorus, and he made Eboracum his home, dying there in 305. Constantine the Great, his son, was first proclaimed emperor at Eboracum. When the Romans departed evil days fell upon York; the barbarians destroyed it, and it was not till 627 that it reappeared in history, when Eadwine, King of Northumbria, was baptized there by St. Paulinus on Easter Day, a little wooden church being built for the purpose. Then began its ecclesiastical eminence, for Paulinus was the first Archbishop of York, beginning a line of prelates that has continued unbroken since. In the eighth century the Northmen began their incursions, and from spoilers ultimately became settlers. York prospered, being thronged with Danish merchants, and in the tenth century had thirty thousand population. In King Harold’s reign the Northmen attacked and captured the town, when Harold surprised and defeated them, killing their leader Tostig, but no sooner had he won the victory than he had to hasten southward to meet William the Norman, and be in turn vanquished and slain. York resisted William, but he ultimately conquered the city and built a castle there, but being rebellious the people attacked the castle. He returned and chastised them and built a second castle on the Ouse; but the discontent deepened, and a Danish fleet appearing in the Humber there was another rebellion, and the Norman garrison firing the houses around the castle to clear the ground for its better defence, the greater part of the city was consumed. While this was going on the Danes arrived, attacked and captured both castles, slaughtered their entire garrisons of three thousand men, and were practically unopposed by the discontented people. Then it was that the stalwart Norman William swore “by the splendor of God” to avenge himself on Northumbria, and, keeping his pledge, he devastated the entire country north of the Humber.

York continued to exist without making much history for several centuries, till the Wars of the Roses came between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. In this York bore its full part, but it was at first the Lancastrian king who was most frequently found at York, and not the duke who bore the title. But after Towton Field, on Palm Sunday, March 29, 1461, the most sanguinary battle ever fought in England, one hundred thousand men being engaged, the news of their defeat was brought to the Lancastrian king Henry and Queen Margaret at York, and they soon became fugitives, and their youthful adversary, the Duke of York, was crowned Edward IV. in York Minster. In the Civil War it was in York that Charles I. took refuge, and from that city issued his first declaration of war against the Parliament. For two years York was loyal to the king, and then the fierce siege took place in which the Parliamentary forces ruined St. Mary’s Abbey by undermining and destroying its tower. Prince Rupert raised this siege, but the respite was not long. Marston Moor saw the king defeated, Rupert’s troopers being, as the historian tells us, made as “stubble to the swords of Cromwell’s Ironsides.” The king’s shattered army retreated to York, was pursued, and in a fortnight York surrendered to the Parliamentary forces. The city languished afterwards, losing its trade, and developing vast pride, but equal poverty. Since the days of railways, however, it has become a very important junction, and has thus somewhat revived its activity.

The walls of York are almost as complete as those of Chester, while its ancient gateways are in much better preservation. The gateways, called “bars,” are among the marked features of the city, and the streets leading to them are called “gates.” The chief of these is Micklegate, the highroad leading to the south, the most important street in York, and Micklegate Bar is the most graceful in design of all, coming down from Tudor days, with turrets and battlements pierced with cross-shaped loopholes and surmounted by small stone figures of warriors. It was on this bar that the head of the Duke of York was exposed, and the ghastly spectacle greeted his son, Edward IV., as he rode into the town after Towton Field. It did not take long to strike off the heads of several distinguished prisoners and put them in his place as an expiatory offering. Here also whitened the heads of traitors down to as late as the last Jacobite rebellion. One of the buttresses of the walls of York is the Red Tower, so called from the red brick of which it is built. These walls and gates are full of interesting relics of the olden time, and they are still preserved to show the line of circumvallation of the ancient walled city. But the chief glory of York is its famous minster, on which the hand of time has been lightly laid. When King Eadwine was baptized in the little wooden church hastily erected for the purpose, he began building at the same place, at the suggestion of Paulinus, a large and more noble basilica of stone, wherein the little church was to be included. But before it was completed the king was slain, and his head was brought to York and buried in the portico of the basilica. This church fell into decay, and was burned in the eighth century. On its site was built a much larger minster, which was consumed in William the Conqueror’s time, when the greater part of York was burned. From its ashes rose the present magnificent minster, portions of which were building from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, it being completed as we now see it in 1470, and reconsecrated as the cathedral of St. Peter with great pomp in 1472. Its chief treasure, was the shrine of St. William, the nephew of King Stephen, a holy man of singularly gentle character. When he came into York it is said the pressure of the crowd was so great that it caused the fall of a bridge over the Ouse, but the saint by a miracle saved all their lives. The shrine was destroyed at the Reformation, and the relics buried in the nave, where they were found in the last century. York Minster remained almost unchanged until 1829, when a lunatic named Martin concealed himself one night in the cathedral and set fire to the woodwork of the choir, afterwards escaping through a transept-window. The fire destroyed the timber roofs of the choir and nave and the great organ. Martin was arrested, and confined in an asylum until he died. The restoration cost $350,000, and had not long been completed when some workmen accidentally set fire to the south-western tower, which gutted it, destroyed the bells, and burned the roof of the nave. This mischief cost $125,000 to repair, and the southern transept, which was considered unsafe, has since been partially rebuilt.

Few English cathedrals exceed York Minster in dignity and massive grandeur. It is the largest Gothic church in the kingdom, and contains one of the biggest bells. “Old Peter,” weighing ten and three-quarter tons, and struck regularly every day at noon. The minster is five hundred and twenty-four feet long, two hundred and twenty-two feet wide, ninety-nine feet high in the nave, and its towers rise about two hundred feet, the central tower being two hundred and twelve feet high. Its great charms are its windows, most of them containing the original stained glass, some of it nearly six hundred years old. The east window is the largest stained-glass window in the world, seventy-seven by thirty-two feet, and of exquisite design, being made by John Thornton of Coventry in 1408, who was paid one dollar per week wages and got a present of fifty dollars when he finished it. At the end of one transept is the Five Sisters Window, designed by five nuns, each planning a tall, narrow sash; and a beautiful rose-window is at the end of the other transept. High up in the nave the statue of St. George stands on one side defying the dragon, who pokes out his head on the other. Its tombs are among the minster’s greatest curiosities. The effigy of Archbishop Walter de Grey, nearly six hundred and fifty years old, is stretched out in an open coffin lying under a superb canopy, and the corpse instead of being in the ground is overhead in the canopy. All the walls are full of memorial tablets a few modern ones to English soldiers, but most of them ancient. Strange tombs are also set in the walls, bearing effigies of the dead. Sir William Gee stands up with his two wives, one on each side, and his six children all eight statues having their hands folded. Others sit up like Punch and Judy, the women dressed in hoops, farthingales, and ruffs, the highest fashions of their age. Here is buried Wentworth, second Earl of Strafford, and scores of archbishops. The body of the famous Hotspur is entombed in the wall beneath the great east window. Burke’s friend Saville is buried here, that statesman having written his epitaph. The outside of the minster has all sorts of grotesque protubérances, which, according to the ancient style of church-building, represent the evil spirits that religion casts out. Adjoining the north transept, and approached through a beautiful vestibule, is the chapter-house, an octagonal building sixty-three feet in diameter and surmounted by a pyramidal roof. Seven of its sides are large stained-glass windows, and the ceiling is a magnificent work.

York Castle occupied a peninsula between the Ouse and a branch called the Foss. Of this Clifford’s Tower is about all of the ancient work that remains. It rises on its mound high above the surrounding buildings, and was the keep of the ancient fortress, constructed according to a remarkable and unique plan, consisting of parts of four cylinders running into each other. It dates from Edward I., but the entrance was built by Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, its governor under Charles I. The interior of the tower was afterwards burned, and George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, who was imprisoned there, planted a walnut tree within the tower which is still growing. It was in the keep of the Norman castle, which this tower replaced, that the massacre of the Jews, which grew out of race-jealousy at their great wealth, occurred in 1190. On March 16th the house of Benet, the leading Jew in York, was sacked by a mob and his wife and children murdered. Five hundred of his countrymen then sought refuge in the castle, and those who remained outside were killed. The mob besieged the castle, led by a hermit from the neighborhood “famed for zeal and holiness,” who was clothed in white robes, and each morning celebrated mass and inflamed the fury of the besiegers by his preaching. At last he ventured too near the walls, and was brained by a stone. Battering-rams were then brought up, and a night’s carouse was indulged in before the work of knocking down the castle began. Within was a different scene: the Jews were without food or hope. An aged rabbi, who had come as a missionary from the East, and was venerated almost as a prophet, exhorted his brethren to render up freely their lives to God rather than await death at the enemy’s hands. Nearly all decided to follow his counsel; they fired the castle, destroyed their property, killed their wives and children, and then turned their swords upon themselves. Day broke, and the small remnant who dared not die called from the walls of the blazing castle that they were anxious for baptism and “the faith and peace of Christ.” They were promised everything, opened the gates, and were all massacred. In later years York Castle has enclosed some well-known prisoners, among them Eugene Aram, and Dick Turpin, who was hanged there. The York elections and mass-meetings are held in the courtyard.

Here Wilberforce, who long represented York in Parliament, spoke in 1784, when Boswell wrote of him: “I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table, but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale.” The York streets are full of old houses, many with porches and overhanging fronts. One of the most curious rows is the Shambles, on a narrow street and dating from the fourteenth century. A little way out of town is the village of Holgate, which was the residence of Lindley Murray the grammarian. Guy Fawkes is said to have been a native of York, and this strange and antique old city, we are also credibly assured, was in 1632 the birthplace of Robinson Crusoe.

CASTLE HOWARD.

Starting north-east from York towards the coast, we go along the pretty valley of the Derwent, and not far from the borders of the stream come to that magnificent pile, the seat of the Earls of Carlisle Castle Howard. More than a century ago Walpole wrote of it: “Lord Strafford had told me that I should see one of the finest places in Yorkshire, but nobody had informed me that I should at one view see a palace, a town, a fortified city: temples on high places; woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids; vales connected to hills by other woods; the noblest lawn in the world, fenced by half the horizon; and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive. In short, I have seen gigantic places before, but never a sublimer one.” Castle Howard was the work of Vanbrugh, the designer of Blenheim, and in plan is somewhat similar, but much more sober and simple, with a central cupola that gives it dignity. It avoids many of the faults of Blenheim: its wings are more subdued, so that the central colonnade stands out to greater advantage, and there are few more imposing country-houses in England than this palace of the Howards. This family are scions of the ducal house of Norfolk, so that “all the blood of all the Howards,” esteemed the bluest blood in the kingdom, runs in their veins. The Earls of Carlisle are descended from “Belted Will” Lord William Howard, the lord warden of the Marches in the days of the first Stuart whose stronghold was at Naworth Castle, twelve miles north-east of Carlisle. His grandson took an active part in the restoration of Charles II., and in recompense was created the first Earl of Carlisle. His bones lie in York Minster. His grandson, the third earl, who was deputy earl-marshal at the coronation of Queen Anne, built Castle Howard. The seventh earl, George William Frederick, was for eight years viceroy in Ireland, resigning in 1864 on account of ill-health; and it is said that he was one of the few English rulers who really won the affections of the people of that unhappy country. He died soon afterwards.

Leaving the railway-station in the valley of the Derwent, and mounting the hills to the westward, a little village is reached on the confines of the park. Beyond the village the road to the park-gates passes through meadow-land, and is bordered by beautiful beech trees arranged in clusters of about a dozen trees in each, producing an unusual but most happy effect. The gateway is entered, a plain building in a castellated wall this being Walpole’s “fortified city” and, proceeding up a slope, the fine avenue of beeches crosses another avenue of lime trees. Here is placed an obelisk erected in honor of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, which also bears an inscription telling of the erection of Castle Howard. It recites that the house was built on the site of the old castle of Hinderskelf, and was begun in 1702 by Charles, the third Earl of Carlisle, who set up this inscription in 1731. The happy earl, pleased with the grand palace and park he had created, thus addresses posterity on the obelisk:

“If to perfection these plantations rise, If they agreeably my heirs surprise, This faithful pillar will their age declare As long as time these characters shall spare. Here, then, with kind remembrance read his name Who for posterity performed the same.”

The avenue then leads on past the north front of the castle, standing in a fine situation upon a ridge between two shallow valleys. The bed of the northern valley has been converted into a lake, while on the southern slopes are beautiful and extensive lawns and gardens. The house forms three sides of a hollow square, and within, it is interesting in pictures and ornaments. It is cut up, however, into small rooms and long, chilly corridors, which detract from its good effect. The entrance-hall is beneath the central dome and occupies the whole height of the structure, but it is only about thirty-five feet square, giving a sense of smallness. Frescoes decorate the walls and ceilings. The public apartments, which are in several suites opening into each other and flanked by long corridors, are like a museum, so full are they of rare works of art, china, glass, and paintings. Much of the collection came from the Orleans Gallery. There are also many portraits in black and red chalk by Janet, a French artist who flourished in the sixteenth century. Some of the paintings are of great value, and are by Rubens, Caracci, Canaletti, Tintoretto, Titian, Hogarth, Bellini, Mabuse, Holbein, Lely, Vandyke, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others. The Castle Howard collection is exceptionally valuable in historical portraits. The windows of the drawing-room look out upon extensive flower-gardens, laid out in rather formal style with antique vases and statues. Beyond these gardens is seen a circular temple placed upon a knoll, the “mausoleum” which so moved Walpole. Here the former owners of the castle are buried, a constant memento mori to the tenants of the house, though the taste certainly seems peculiar that has made the family tomb the most prominent object in the view from the drawing-room windows.

Not far from Castle Howard are the ruins of Kirkham Priory. A charming fragment of this noble church remains in a grassy valley on the margin of the Derwent. Here, nearly eight hundred years ago, the Augustinians established the priory, the founder being Sir Walter l’Espec, one of the leaders of the English who drove back King David’s Scottish invasion at the battle of the Standard, near Durham. Sir Walter had an only son, who was one day riding near the site of Kirkham when a wild boar suddenly rushed across his path. The horse plunged and threw his rider, who, striking head-foremost against a projecting stone, was killed. Sir Walter, being childless, determined to devote his wealth to the service of God, and founded three religious houses one in Bedfordshire, another at Rievaulx, where he sought refuge from his sorrows, and the third at the place of his son’s death at Kirkham. Legend says that the youth was caught by his foot in the stirrup when thrown, and was dragged by his runaway horse to the spot where the high altar was afterwards located. Sir Walter’s sister married into the family of De Ros, among the ancestors of the Dukes of Rutland, and they were patrons of Kirkham until the dissolution of the monasteries. Little remains of it: the gate-house still stands, and in front is the base of a cross said to have been made from the stone against which the boy was thrown. Alongside this stone they hold a “bird-fair” every summer, where jackdaws, starlings, and other birds are sold, with a few rabbits thrown in; but the fair now is chiefly an excuse for a holiday. The church was three hundred feet long, with the convent-buildings to the southward, but only scant ruins remain. Beyond the ruins, at the edge of the greensward, the river glides along under a gray stone bridge. At Howsham, in the neighborhood, Hudson the railway king was born, and at Foston-lé-Clay Sydney Smith lived, having for his friends the Earl and Countess of Carlisle of that day, who made their first call in a gold coach and got stuck fast in the clay. Here the witty vicar resided, having been presented to a living, and built himself a house, which he described as “the ugliest in the county,” but admitted by all critics to be “one of the most comfortable,” though located “twenty miles from a lemon.” Subsequently Smith left here for Somersetshire.

SCARBOROUGH AND WHITBY.

The coast of Yorkshire affords the boldest and grandest scenery on the eastern shore of England. A great protruding backbone of chalk rocks projects far into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, and makes one of the most prominent landmarks on all that rugged, iron-bound coast. This is the Ocellum Promontorium of Ptolemy, and its lighthouse is three hundred and thirty feet above the sea, while far away over the waters the view is superb. From Flamborough Head northward beyond Whitby the coast-line is a succession of abrupt white cliffs and bold headlands, presenting magnificent scenery. About twenty-three miles north of Flamborough is the “Queen of Northern Watering-places,” as Scarborough is pleased to be called, where a bold headland three hundred feet high juts out into the North Sea for a mile, having on each side semicircular bays, each about a mile and a quarter wide. At the extreme point of the lozenge-shaped promontory stands the ruined castle which named the town Scar-burgh, with the sea washing the rocky base of its foundations on three sides. Steep cliffs run precipitously down to the narrow beach that fringes these bays around, and on the cliffs is the town of Scarborough, while myriads of fishing-vessels cluster about the breakwater-piers that have been constructed to make a harbor of refuge. It would be difficult to find a finer situation, and art has improved it to the utmost, especially as mineral springs add the attractions of a spa to the sea air and bathing. The old castle, battered by war and the elements, is a striking ruin, the precipitous rock on which it stands being a natural fortress. The Northmen when they first invaded Britain made its site their stronghold, but the present castle was not built until the reign of King Stephen, when its builder, William lé Gros, Earl of Albemarle, was so powerful in this part of Yorkshire that it was said he was “in Stephen’s days the more real king.” But Henry II. compelled the proud earl to submit to his authority, though “with much searching of heart and choler,” and Scarborough afterwards became one of the royal castles, Edward I. in his earlier years keeping court there. It was there that Edward II. was besieged and his favorite Gaveston starved into surrender, and then beheaded on Blacklow Hill in violation of the terms of his capitulation. Scarborough was repeatedly attacked by the Scotch, but it subsequently enjoyed an interval of peace until the Reformation. In Wyatt’s rebellion his friends secured possession of the castle by stratagem. A number of his men, disguised as peasants, on market-day strolled one by one into the castle, and then at a given signal overpowered the sentinels and admitted the rest of their band. The castle, however, was soon recaptured from the rebels, and Thomas Stafford, the leader in this enterprise, was beheaded. From this event is derived the proverb of a “Scarborough warning” a word and a blow, but the blow first. In Elizabeth’s reign Scarborough was little else but a fishing-village, and so unfortunate that it appealed to the queen for aid. In the Civil War the castle was held by the Royalists, and was besieged for six months. While the guns could not reduce it, starvation did, and the Parliamentary army took possession. Three years later the governor declared for the king, and the castle again stood a five months’ siege, finally surrendering. Since then it has fallen into decay, but it was a prison-house for George Fox the Quaker, who was treated with severity there. A little way down the hill are the ruins of the ancient church of St. Mary, which has been restored.

The cliffs on the bay to the south of Castle Hill have been converted into a beautifully-terraced garden and promenade. Here, amid flowers and summer houses and terraced walks, is the fashionable resort, the footpaths winding up and down the face of the cliffs or broadening into the gardens, where music is provided and there are nightly illuminations. Millions of money have been expended in beautifying the front of the cliffs adjoining the Spa, which is on the seashore, and to which Scarborough owed its original fame as a watering-place. The springs were discovered in 1620, and by the middle of the last century had become fashionable, but the present ornamental Spa was erected only about forty years ago. There is a broad esplanade in front. There are two springs, one containing more salt, lime, and magnesia sulphates than the other. In the season, this esplanade in fact, the entire front of the cliffs is full of visitors, while before it are rows of little boxes on wheels, the bathing-houses that are drawn into the water. The surf is usually rather gentle, however, though the North Sea can knock things about at a lively rate in a storm.

North of Scarborough the coast extends, a grand escarpment of cliffs and headlands, past Robin Hood’s Bay, with its rocky barriers, the North Cheek and the South Cheek, to the little harbor of another watering-place, Whitby. The cliffs here are more precipitous and the situation even more picturesque than at Scarborough. The river Esk has carved a deep glen in the Yorkshire moorland, and in this the town nestles, climbing the steep banks on either side of the river. The ruins of Whitby Abbey are located high up on the side of the ravine opposite to the main part of the town, and they still present a noble if dilapidated pile. The nave fell after a storm in the last century, and a similar cause threw down the central tower in 1830. The choir and northern transept are still standing, extremely beautiful Early English work: only fragments of other portions of the abbey remain. This was in olden times the Westminster of Northumbria, containing the tombs of Eadwine and of Oswy, with kings and nobles grouped around them. It has been over twelve hundred years since a religious house was founded at Whitby, at first known as the White Homestead, an outgrowth of the abbey, which was founded by Oswy and presided over by the sainted Hilda, who chose the spot upon the lonely crags by the sea. The fame of Whitby as a place of learning soon spread, and here lived the cowherd Caedmon, the first English poet. The Danes sacked and burned it but after the Norman Conquest, under the patronage of the Percies, the abbey grew in wealth and fame. Fragments of the monastery yet remain, and on the hill a little lower down is the parish church, with a long flight of steps leading up to it from the harbor along which the people go, and when there is a funeral the coffin has to be slung in order to be carried up the steps. Whitby is famous for its jet, which is worked into numerous ornaments: this is a variety of fossil wood, capable of being cut and taking a high polish. It is also celebrated for its production of iron-ore, which indeed is a product of all this part of Yorkshire; while at night, along the valley of the Tees, not far north of Whitby, the blaze of the myriads of furnaces light up the heavens like the fire of Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. Among the tales of the abbey is that which

“Whitby’s nuns exulting told, How to their house three barons bold Must menial service do.”

It appears that three gentlemen De Bruce, De Percy, and Allaston were hunting boars on the abbey-lands in 1159, and roused a fine one, which their dogs pressed hard and chased to the hermitage, where it ran into the chapel and dropped dead. The hermit closed the door against the hounds, and the hunters, coming up, were enraged to find the dogs baulked of their prey, and on the hermit’s opening the door they attacked him with their boar-spears and mortally wounded him. It was not long before they found that this was dangerous sport, and they took sanctuary at Scarborough. The Church, however, did not protect those who had insulted it, and they were given up to the abbot of Whitby, who was about to make an example of them when the dying hermit summoned the abbot and the prisoners to his bedside and granted them their lives and lands. But it was done upon a peculiar tenure: upon Ascension Day at sunrise they were to come to the wood on Eskdale-side, and the abbot’s officer was to deliver to each “ten stakes, eleven stout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some of you, with a knife of one penny price;” these they were to take on their backs to Whitby before nine o’clock in the morning. Then said the hermit, “If it be full sea your labor and service shall cease; and if low water, each of you shall set your stakes to the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them on each side with your yethers, and so stake on each side with your stout stowers, that they may stand three tides without removing by the force thereof. You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most cruelly slay me, and that you may the better call to God for mercy, repent unfeignedly of your sins, and do good works. The officer of Eskdale-side shall blow, ’Out on you, out on you, out on you for this heinous crime!’” Failure of this strange service was to forfeit their lands to the abbot of Whitby.

DURHAM.

We have now come into a region of coal and iron, with mines and furnaces in abundance, and tall chimneys in all the villages pouring out black smoke. All the country is thoroughly cultivated, and the little streams bubbling over the stones at the bottoms of the deep valleys, past sloping green fields and occasional patches of woods where the land is too steep for cultivation, give picturesqueness to the scene. We have crossed over the boundary from Yorkshire into Durham, and upon the very crooked little river Wear there rise upon the tops of the precipitous cliffs bordering the stream, high elevated above the red-tiled roofs of the town, the towers of Durham Cathedral and Castle. They stand in a remarkable position. The Wear, swinging around a curve like an elongated horseshoe, has excavated a precipitous valley out of the rocks. At the narrower part of the neck there is a depression, so that the promontory around which the river sweeps appears like the wrist with the hand clenched. The town stands at the depression, descending the slopes on either side to the river, and also spreading upon the opposite banks. The castle bars the access to the promontory, upon which stands the cathedral. Thus, almost impregnably fortified, the ancient bishops of Durham were practically sovereigns, and they made war as quickly as they would celebrate a mass if their powers were threatened, for they bore alike the sword and the crozier. Durham was founded to guard the relics of the famous St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, the great ascetic of the early English Church, distinguished above all others for the severity of his mortifications and his abhorrence of women. At his shrine, we are told, none of the gentler sex might worship; they were admitted to the church, but in the priory not even a queen could lodge. Queen Philippa was once admitted there as a guest, but a tumult arose, and she had to flee half dressed for safety to the castle. St. Cuthbert was a hermit to whom the sight of human beings was a weariness and the solitude of the desert a delight. He was born in Scotland about the middle of the seventh century, of humble origin, and passed his early years as a shepherd near Melrose. He adopted an austere life, found a friend in the abbot of Melrose, and ultimately sickened of an epidemic, his recovery being despaired of. In answer, however, to the prayers of the monks, he was restored to health as by a miracle, and became the prior of Melrose. Afterwards he was for twelve years prior of Lindisfarne, an island off the Northumbrian coast, but the craving for solitude was too strong to be resisted, and he became a hermit. He went to Farne, a lonely rocky island in the neighboring sea, and, living in a hut, spent his life in prayer and fasting, but having time, according to the legend, to work abundant miracles. A spring issued from the rock to give him water, the sea laid fagots at his feet, and the birds ministered to his wants. At first other monks had free access to him, but gradually he secluded himself in the hut, speaking to them through the window, and ultimately closed even that against them except in cases of emergency. Such sanctity naturally acquired wide fame, and after long urging he consented to become a bishop, at first at Hexham, afterwards at Lindisfarne, thus returning to familiar scenes and an island home. But his life was ebbing, and after two years’ service he longed again for his hermit’s hut on the rock of Farne. He resigned the bishopric, and, returning to his hut, in a few weeks died. His brethren buried him beside his altar, where he rested eleven years; then exhuming the body, it was found thoroughly preserved, and was buried again in a new coffin at Lindisfarne. Almost two hundred years passed, when the Danes made an incursion, and to escape them the monks took the body, with other precious relics, and left Lindisfarne. During four years they wandered about with their sacred charge, and ultimately settled near Chester-lé-Street, where the body of St. Cuthbert rested for over a century; but another Danish invasion in 995 sent the saint’s bones once more on their travels, and they were taken to Ripon. The danger past, the monks started on their return, transporting the coffin on a carriage. They had arrived at the Wear, when suddenly the carriage stopped and was found to be immovable. This event no doubt had a meaning, and the monks prayed and fasted for three days to learn what it was. Then the saint appeared in a vision and said he had chosen this spot for his abode. It was a wild place, known as Dunhelm: the monks went to the Dun, or headland, and erected a tabernacle for their ark from the boughs of trees while they built a stone church, within which, in the year 999, the body was enshrined. This church stood until after the Norman Conquest, when the king made its bishop the Earl of Durham, and his palatinate jurisdiction began.

The present Durham Cathedral was begun in 1093, with the castle alongside. As we look at them from the railway-station, they stand a monument of the days when the same hand grasped the pastoral staff and the sword “half house of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot.” Upon the top of the rocks, which are clad in foliage to the river’s edge, on the left hand, supported by massive outworks built up from halfway down the slope, rises the western face of the castle. Beyond this, above a fringe of trees, rises the lofty cathedral, its high central tower forming the apex of the group and its two western towers looking down into the ravine. The galilee in front appears built up from the depths of the valley, and is supported by outworks scarcely less solid than those of the castle. Durham, more than any other place in England, is a memorial of the temporal authority of the Church, uniting the mitre and the coronet. The plan of Durham Cathedral is peculiar in having the closed galilee at the western end, instead of the open porch as is usual, while the eastern end, which is wider than the choir, terminates abruptly, having no Lady Chapel, but being in effect cut off, with a gable in the centre and a great rose-window. As the galilee overhangs the ravine, the principal entrance to the cathedral is from a fine northern porch. To the portal is affixed a large knocker of quaint design, which in former days was a Mecca for the fugitive, for the shrine of St. Cuthbert enjoyed the right of sanctuary. When the suppliant grasped this knocker he was safe, for over the door two monks kept perpetual watch to open at the first stroke. As soon as admitted the suppliant was required to confess his crime, whatever it might be. This was written down, and a bell in the galilee tolled to announce the fact that some one had sought “the peace of Cuthbert;” and he was then clothed in a black gown with a yellow cross on the shoulder. After thirty-seven days, if no pardon could be obtained, the malefactor solemnly abjured his native land for ever, and was conveyed to the seacoast, bearing a white wooden cross in his hand, and was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship that sailed.

The interior of Durham Cathedral is regarded as the noblest Norman construction yet remaining in England. The arcade, triforium, and clerestory are in fine proportion; the nave has a vaulted roof of stone, and the alternate columns are clustered in plan, their middle shafts extending from floor to roof. These columns are enriched with zigzag, lattice, spiral, and vertical flutings. This cathedral, begun in 1093, was nearly two centuries building, and the Chapel of Nine Altars, in honor of various saints, was erected at the eastern end in the twelfth century. Some of these altars did duty for a pair of saints, St. Cuthbert sharing the central one with St. Bede, a name only second to his in the memories of Durham, so that the nine altars were availed of to reverence sixteen saints. Behind the reredos a platform extends a short distance into this chapel at a height of six feet above the floor. A large blue flagstone is let into the platform, with shallow grooves on either hand. Here stood St. Cuthbert’s shrine, highly ornamented, and having seats underneath for the pilgrims and cripples who came to pray for relief. This being never wanting, we are told that the shrine came to be so richly invested that it was esteemed one of the most sumptuous monuments in England, so numerous were the offerings and jewels bestowed upon it. Among the relics here accumulated was the famous Black Rood of Scotland, the prize of the battle of Neville’s Cross, fought near Durham. There were also many relics of saints and martyrs, scraps of clothing of the Saviour and the Virgin, pieces of the crown of thorns and of the true cross, vials containing the milk of the Virgin Mother and the blood of St. Thomas, besides elephants’ tusks and griffins’ claws and eggs, with myriads of jewels. In 1104, St. Cuthbert’s body was deposited in this shrine with solemn ceremonies, and it rested there undisturbed until the dissolution of the monasteries, reverentially watched, day and night, by monks stationed in an adjoining chamber. Then the shrine was destroyed and the treasures scattered, the coffin opened, and St. Cuthbert buried beneath the slab, so that now the only remnants visible are the furrows worn in the adjoining pavement by the feet of the ancient worshippers. Tradition tells that the exact position of St. Cuthbert’s grave is known only to three Benedictine monks, of whom Scott writes:

“There, deep in Durham’s Gothic shade, His relics are in secret laid, But none may know the place, Save of his holiest servants three, Deep sworn to solemn secrecy, Who share that wondrous grace.”

The corpse, however, rests beneath the blue slab. In 1827 it was raised, and, while other human remains were found, there was disclosed beneath them, in a coffin, a skeleton vested in mouldering robes, and with it various treasures, which, with the robes, accord with the description of those present in St. Cuthbert’s coffin when opened in 1104. The skeleton was reinterred in a new coffin, and the relics, particularly an ancient golden cross and a comb, were placed in the cathedral library.

In the galilee of Durham Cathedral, near the south-eastern angle, is a plain, low altar-tomb that marks the resting-place of St. Bede, commonly known as “the Venerable Bede” a title which angelic hands are said to have supplied to the line inscribed on his tomb. He was the first English historian, a gentle, simple scholar, who spent his life from childhood in a monastery at Jarrow, near the mouth of the Wear, and took his pleasure in learning, teaching, or writing. His great work was the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, which occupied many years in compilation, and is still the most trusted history of the period of which it treats. His literary activity was extraordinary, and he produced many other works. He was born near Durham in 672, and died in 735. His devotion to literary work was such that even during his last illness he was dictating to an amanuensis a translation of the Gospel of St. John into Anglo-Saxon, and upon completing the last sentence requested the assistant to place him on the floor of his cell, where he said a short prayer, and expired as the closing words passed his lips. He was buried where he had lived, at Jarrow, and as the centuries passed the fame of his sanctity and learning increased. Then a certain AElfred conceived the idea of stealing St. Bede’s remains for the glorification of Durham. Several times baffled, he at length succeeded, and carrying the precious relics to Durham, they were for a time preserved in St. Cuthbert’s shrine, but were afterwards removed to a separate tomb, which in 1370 was placed in the galilee, where it has since remained. At the Reformation the shrine was destroyed, and St. Bede’s bones, like St. Cuthbert’s, were buried beneath the spot on which the shrine had stood. This tomb was opened in 1831, and many human bones were found beneath, together with a gilt ring. The bones in all probability were St. Bede’s remains. Durham Cathedral contains few monuments, for reverence for the solitude of St. Cuthbert whom it enshrined excluded memorials of other men during several centuries.

The remains of the Benedictine monastery to which the care of these shrines was entrusted are south of the cathedral, forming three sides of a square, of which the cathedral nave was the fourth. Beyond is an open green, with the castle on the farther side and old buildings on either hand. From this green the castle is entered by a gateway with massive doors, but, while the structure is picturesque, it is not very ancient, excepting this gateway. It has mostly been rebuilt since the twelfth century. This was the palace of the bishops of Durham, of whom Antony Bek raised the power of the see to its highest point. He was prelate, soldier, and politician, equally at home in peace or war, at the head of his troops, celebrating a mass, or surrounded by his great officers of state. He was the first who intruded upon the solitude of St. Cuthbert by being buried in the cathedral. Here lived also Richard of Bury, noted as the most learned man of his generation north of the Alps, and the first English bibliomaniac. Bishop Hatfield also ruled at Durham, famous both as architect and warrior. Cardinal Wolsey lived here when Archbishop of York and his quarrel with Henry VIII. resulted in the Durham palatinate beginning to lose part of its power, so that in the days of his successor, Tunstall, it came to be the “peace of the king,” and not of the bishop, that was broken within its borders. Here also ruled the baron-bishop Crewe, who was both a temporal and a spiritual peer, and Bishop Butler, the profound thinker. But the bishops live there no longer, their palace being moved to Auckland, while the university is located in the castle. It is the Northern University, first projected in Cromwell’s time. About a mile to the westward of Durham was fought the battle of Neville’s Cross in October, 1346. This was a few months after Edward had won the battle of Crecy in France, and the King of Scotland, taking advantage of the absence of the English king and his army, swept over the Border with forty thousand men, devastating the entire country. His chief nobles accompanied him, and to encourage the troops the most sacred relic of Scotland, the “Black Rood,” a crucifix of blackened silver, was present on the battlefield. This had been mysteriously delivered to David I. on the spot in Edinburgh where to commemorate it Holyrood Abbey was afterwards founded. But, though King Edward was in France, Queen Philippa was equal to the emergency. An army was quickly gathered under Earl Neville, and Durham sent its contingent headed by the warlike bishop. The invaders drew near the walls of Durham, and the English army, inferior in numbers, awaited them. To confront the “Black Rood,” the bishop brought into camp an “ark of God” in obedience to a vision: this was one of the cathedral’s choicest treasures, “the holy corporax cloth wherewith St. Cuthbert covered the chalice when he used to say mass.” This, attached to the point of a spear, was displayed in sight of the army, while the monks upon the cathedral towers, in full view of the battlefield, prayed for victory for the defenders of St. Cuthbert’s shrine. They fought three hours in the morning, the Scotch with axes, the English with arrows; but, as the watching monks turned from prayer to praise, the Scottish line wavered and broke, for the banner of St. Cuthbert proved too much for the Black Rood. The King of Scotland was wounded and captured, and fifteen thousand of his men were slain, including many nobles. The Black Rood was captured, and placed in the Nine Altars Chapel. Afterwards the “corporax cloth” was attached to a velvet banner, and became one of the great standards of England, being carried against Scotland by Richard II. and Henry IV., and it waved over the English army at Flodden. When not in use it was attached to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. At the Reformation the Black Rood was lost, and St. Cuthbert’s banner fell into possession of one Dean Whittingham, whose wife, the historian lamentingly says, “being a Frenchwoman, did most despitefully burn the same in her fire, to the open contempt and disgrace of all ancient relics.” A narrow lane, deeply fringed with ferns, leads out of Durham over the hills to the westward of the town, where at a cross-road stand the mutilated remains of Earl Neville’s Cross, set up to mark the battlefield, now a wide expanse of smoky country.

LUMLEY CASTLE AND NEWCASTLE.

Following the Wear northward towards its mouth, at a short distance below Durham it passes the site of the Roman city of Conderum, which had been the resting-place of St. Cuthbert’s bones until the Danish invasion drove them away, and it is now known as Chester-lé-Street. Here, in the old church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert, is the rude effigy of the saint which once surmounted his tomb, and here also is the “Aisle of Tombs,” a chain of fourteen monumental effigies of the Lumleys, dating from Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Lumley Castle, now the Earl of Scarborough’s seat (for he too is a Lumley), is a short distance outside the town, on an eminence overlooking the Wear. It dates from the time of Edward I., but has been much modernized, the chief apartment in the interior being the Great Hall, sixty by thirty feet, with the Minstrel Gallery at the western end. Here on the wall is a life-size statue of the great ancestor of the Lumleys, Liulph the Saxon, seated on a red horse. North of this castle, across the Wear, is the Earl of Durham’s seat, Lambton Castle, a Gothic and Tudor structure recently restored.

Still journeying northward, we cross the hills between the Wear and the Tyne, and come to the New Castle which gives its name to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the great coal shipping port. This is a strange-looking town, with red-tiled roofs, narrow, dingy, crooked streets, and myriads of chimneys belching forth smoke from the many iron-works. These mills and furnaces are numerous also in the surrounding country, while the neighborhood is a network of railways carrying coal from the various lines to the shipping-piers. But this famous city is not all smoke and coal-dust: its New Castle is an ancient structure, rather dilapidated now, coming down from the reign of Henry II., approached by steep stairways up the rock on which the keep is perched. It has a fine hall, which is used as a museum of Roman relics, and from the roof is a grand view along the Tyne. This castle has a well ninety-three feet deep bored in the rock. Newcastle in its newer parts has some fine buildings. Grey Street, containing the theatre and Exchange, for a space of about four hundred yards is claimed to be the finest street in the kingdom. In Low Friars Street is the old chapel of the Black Friars monastery, where Baliol did homage to Edward III. for the Scottish throne. Sir William Armstrong lives at Jesmond, just outside Newcastle, and at Elswick, west of the city, are the extensive workshops where are made the Armstrong guns. The great High Level bridge across the Tyne Valley, built by Stephenson, with a railway on top of a roadway, and one thousand three hundred and thirty-seven feet long, is one of the chief engineering works at Newcastle. George Stephenson was born in 1781 at High Street House, Wylam, near Newcastle, while at Frudhoe Castle is a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. At Wallsend, three miles east of Newcastle, begins the celebrated Roman wall that crossed Britain, and was defended by their legions against incursions by the Scots. Its stone-and-turf walls, with the ditch on the north side, can be distinctly traced across the island.

HEXHAM.

Ascending the Tyne, we come to Hexham, an imposing town as approached by the railway, with the Moat Hall and the abbey church occupying commanding features in the landscape. The Moat Hall is a large and ancient tower, notable for its narrow lights and cornice-like range of corbels. The abbey church, formerly the cathedral of St. Andrew, is a fine specimen of Early English architecture, of which only the transept and some other ruins remain, surmounted by a tower rising about one hundred feet and supported upon magnificent arches. Here is the shrine of the ancient chronicler. Prior Richard, an attractive oratory: and the town also produced another quaint historian of the Border troubles, John of Hexham. It is an antique place, and almost all of its old buildings bear testimony to the disturbed state of the Scottish frontier in the olden time, for not far away are the Cheviot Hills that form the boundary, and in which the Tyne takes its rise. Similar evidence is also given in Haltwhistle, Hexham’s suburb, across the narrow river.

ALNWICK CASTLE.

Journeying northward through Northumberland, and following the coastline for here England narrows as the Scottish border is approached the road crosses the diminutive river Alne, running through a deep valley, and standing in an imposing situation on its southern bank is the renowned stronghold of the Percies and guardian of the Border, Alnwick Castle. The great fortress, as we now see it, was built as a defence against the Scots, and was protected on the northward by the river-valley and a deep ravine, which formerly cut it off from the village, which is as ancient as the fortress, as its quaint old Pottergate Tower attests. Roman remains have been found on the site, and it was also inhabited by the Saxons, the castle at the time of the Norman Conquest being held by Gilbert Tysen, a powerful Northumbrian chief. It was then a primitive timber fortress in a wild region, for the earliest masonry works are Norman, and are attributed to Tysen’s descendants. Alnwick Castle is a cluster of semicircular and angular bastions, surrounded by lofty walls, defended at intervals by towers, and enclosing a space of about five acres. It has three courts or wards, each defended formerly by massive gates, with portcullis, porters lodge, and a strong guardhouse, beneath which was a dungeon. Trap-doors are the only entrances to the latter, into which the prisoners were lowered by ropes. From the village the entrance to the castle is through the barbican, or outer gate, a work of gigantic strength and massive grandeur, which has been the scene of many a brave encounter. Near by is the Postern Tower, a sally-port adjacent to the “Bloody Gap” and “Hotspur’s Chair.” The history of this famous stronghold is practically the history of this portion of the realm, for in all the Border warfare that continued for centuries it was conspicuous. In the reign of William Rufus it was gallantly defended by Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, in the memorable siege by the Scots under King Malcolm III. The garrison were about surrendering, being almost starved, when a private soldier undertook their deliverance. He rode out to the besiegers’ camp, carrying the keys of the castle dangling from his lance, and presented himself a suppliant before the Scottish king, as if to deliver up the keys. Malcolm advanced to receive them, and the soldier pierced him through the heart. Malcolm fell dead, and in the confusion the bold trooper sprang upon his horse, dashed across the river, and was safe. Malcolm’s eldest son, Prince Edward, advanced rashly to avenge the king’s death, and fell mortally wounded from the castle. Hammond’s Ford, named for the bold trooper, marks the spot where he and his horse swam across the Alne, which at the time was swollen. In memory of Malcolm, a cross stands on the spot where he was slain, and near by is Malcolm’s Well and the ruins of St. Leonard’s Chapel, built for the unfortunate king’s expiation. Upon the cross the inscription states that Malcolm fell November 13, 1093, and that the original cross, decayed by time, was restored by his descendant, Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, in 1774. Eustace de Vesci, who built St. Leonard’s Chapel, lived in the days of Henry I. and Stephen, and founded the abbey of Alnwick. King David of Scotland captured the old timber castle there in 1135 on his great invasion of England, and Eustace afterwards built the first masonry work of Alnwick Castle, traces of his walls having since been found.

Alnwick descended to William, son of Eustace, and in 1174, William the Lion, returning from an invasion of Cumberland, passed before the castle, and was captured and sent a prisoner into England. Alnwick descended to William’s son Eustace, who was visited by King John in 1209, and the king there received the homage of Alexander of Scotland. Eustace was one of the chief barons who wrested Magna Charta from John, and in the closing year of that reign met his death from an arrow before Barnard Castle. Henry III. visited Alnwick, and the great Edward I. was there several times as the guest of John de Vesci near the close of the thirteenth century. The Barons de Vesci soon afterwards became extinct, and then the warlike bishop of Durham, Antony Bek, came in and grabbed the castle. He sold it in 1309 to Henry de Percy, and from this dates the rise of the great family of the northern Border, who have held Alnwick for nearly six centuries, its present owner being his descendant, Algernon George Percy, Duke of Northumberland, in whose veins flows the blood of so many great families that he can use nine hundred heraldic devices on his armorial bearings, including those of many kings and princes. Henry de Percy became the leader of the Border barons, and, although living at Alnwick only five years, seems to have rebuilt most of the castle, his son completing it. The Percies became the Earls of Northumberland, and such warlike lives did they lead (as, for instance, young Henry Percy, “Hotspur”) that it is noted that Henry Algernon, the fifth earl, was the first of the race who died in bed. The next of the line was executed for rebellion, and the next was beheaded at York for conspiring against Queen Elizabeth. The eighth earl, favoring Mary Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in the Tower, and was one day found in his chamber shot through the heart. Henry, the ninth earl, was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, imprisoned in the Tower, and fined $250,000. After his release he spent the remainder of his life at Petworth; Alnwick was neglected; and the direct line of descent ultimately ended with Elizabeth, daughter of the eleventh earl, who married the Duke of Somerset in 1682. Her grandson, Algernon, became Earl of Northumberland, and his daughter, Elizabeth Seymour, was the ancestress of the present family, her husband being created the first Duke of Northumberland. Alnwick was then a ruin, but he restored it, and subsequently, under the direction of the architect Salvin, it was completely rebuilt, everything worthy of preservation being kept, and the new work being adapted to the days of the earlier Percies, whose achievements gave the stronghold such world-wide renown.

This famous castle is full of recollections of the great men who formerly inhabited it. The Constable’s Tower, remaining mostly in its ancient condition, has in an upper apartment arms for fifteen hundred men, the Percy tenantry, while in the rooms beneath is deposited the ancient armor. “Hotspur’s Chair” is the name given to a seated recess of the Ravine Tower which was Hotspur’s favorite resort, where he sat while his troops exercised in the castle-yard beneath, and where he had an admirable lookout to discover an approaching enemy. Through the loopholes on either side of the seat in this commanding tower there is an extensive prospect over the valley of the Alne and to the distant seacoast. The “Bloody Gap,” another noted site in the castle, is between the Ravine and Round Towers. It was the name given to a breach in the wall made by the Scots during the Border wars, although the exact time is unknown. According to tradition, three hundred Scots fell within the breach, and they were ultimately beaten off. Many arrows have been found in the adjacent walls, so located as to indicate they were shot from the battlements and windows of the keep when the assailants were making this breach. Alnwick Castle was restored by Salvin with strict regard to the rules of mediaeval military architecture. When it was the great Border stronghold its governor commanded a force of no less than two thousand men, who were employed in a complicated system of day and night watching to guard against forays by the Scots. The day watchers began at daylight, and blew a horn on the approach of the foe, when all men were bound on pain of death to respond for the general defence. The great feature of the restored castle is the Prudhoe Tower, built about twenty-five years ago. After entering the barbican, which admits to the outer ward, the visitor passes between the Abbot’s Tower on the left and the Corner Tower and Auditor’s Tower on the right. Earl Hugh’s turreted tower also rises boldly from the battlements. Passing through the middle gatehouse, the keep, constructed in the form of a polygon around a court, is seen on the right hand, and in the gateway-wall is Percy’s famous draw-well, with a statue of St. James above blessing the waters. Opposite this draw-well is a covered drive which leads to the entrance of Prudhoe Tower. This tower is a magnificent structure, containing the family and state-apartments, built and decorated in the Italian style, and approached by a staircase twelve feet wide. It was built at enormous cost, and alongside is a vaulted kitchen of ample proportions, constructed in the baronial style, where there are sufficient facilities to prepare dinner for six hundred persons at one time, while the subterranean regions contain bins for three hundred tons of coal. Such is this great baronial Border stronghold, replete with memories of the warlike Percies. From here Hotspur sallied forth to encounter the marauding Scottish force which under Douglas had laid waste England as far as the gates of York, and almost within the sight of the castle is the bloody field of Otterbourn, where Douglas fell by Hotspur’s own hand, though the English lost the day and Hotspur himself was captured. Again, as war’s fortunes change, just north of Alnwick is Humbleton Hill, where the Scots had to fly before England’s “deadly arrow-hail,” leaving their leader, Douglas, with five wounds and only one eye, a prisoner in the hands of the Percies. It was from Alnwick’s battlements that the countess watched “the stout Earl of Northumberland” set forth, “his pleasure in the Scottish woods three summer days to take” an expedition from which he never returned. Such was the history for centuries of this renowned castle, which is regarded as presenting the most perfect specimen now existing, perhaps in the world, of the feudal stronghold of mediaeval days.

And now let us turn from the castle to the church. Almost alongside of it is St. Michael’s Church, built with battlements, as if prepared as much for defence as for worship, and a watch-tower, made evidently for a lookout and to hold a beacon to warn of the approach of forays. This was one of the regular chain of Border beacons. Within the church an old iron-work lectern still holds the “Book of the Homilies,” while the churchyard is full of ancient gravestones. Alnwick Abbey once existed down alongside the river, under the protection of the castle, but it has been long since ruined, and its remains have served as a quarry for the village buildings until little of them remains. Its extensive domains are now part of the Duke’s Park, and another contributor to this park was Hulne Priory, the earliest Carmelite monastery in England, founded in 1240. It stood upon a projecting spur of rising land above the Alne, backed by rich woods, but was neither large nor wealthy, as the neighboring abbey eclipsed it. The discipline of the Carmélites was rigorous. Each friar had a coffin for his cell and slept on straw, while every morning he dug a shovelful of earth for his grave and crept on his knees in prayer. Silence, solitude, and strict fasting were the injunction upon all, and their buildings were sternly simple. The porter’s lodge and curtain-wall enclosing Hulne Priory still stand, and its outline can be traced, though the ruins are scant. Yet this, like all else at Alnwick, bears evidence of the troublous times on the Border. The most important of its remaining buildings is an embattled tower of refuge from the Scottish invader. Its inscription states that it was built in 1448 by Sir Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland. Opposite Hulne Priory is Brislee Hill, which presents the most renowned view in Alnwick Park. A tower rises among the trees upon the crest of the hill from which bonfires now blaze on occasions of festivity. Here, over the park, can be seen the castle and town, and beyond, to the eastward, the sea, with its coast-castles as far north as Bamborough. The little Coquet Island in the distance breaks the expanse of blue waters. To the westward beyond the moors rises the sharp outline of the Scottish Border, the Cheviot Hills, running off towards the north-east, and containing in their depressions the passes through which the Scots used to pour when they harried Northern England and roused the Alnwick warriors to defend their firesides.

FORD CASTLE AND FLODDEN FIELD.

Northward, past the extremity of the Cheviots, flows the Tweed, and one of its tributaries on the English side is the Till, which drains the bases of those sharp hills, that rise nearly twenty-seven hundred feet. Here was Ford Castle, and here was fought the terrible Border battle of Flodden in 1513. Ford Castle dated from the time of Edward I., and its proximity to the Border made it the object of many assaults. In the fifteenth century it was held by Sir William Heron, and a few days before the battle of Flodden the Scots, under James IV., during Sir William’s captivity in Scotland, stormed and destroyed Ford, taking captive Lady Heron, who had endeavored to defend it. In the last century Ford was restored by the Marquis of Waterford, to whom it had descended, so that it now appears as a fine baronial mansion, surmounted by towers and battlements, and standing in a commanding situation overlooking the valley of the Till, with the lofty Cheviots closing the view a few miles to the south-west, their peaks affording ever-varying scenes as the season changes.

The great attraction of the view, however, is the famous hill of Flodden, about a mile to the westward, crowned by a plantation of dark fir trees, and presenting, with the different aspects of the weather, ever-changeful scenery, recalling now the “dark Flodden” and anon the “red Flodden” of the balladists. Across the valley from Ford Castle, and at the foot of this fir-crowned hill, was fought one of the bitterest contests of the Border. Now, the famous battlefield is a highly-cultivated farm and sheep-pasture. James IV. of Scotland had unjustly determined to make war upon England, and he set out upon it in opposition to the real desire of his countrymen, and even against the omens of Heaven, as the people believed. A few days before he departed for his army the king attended St. Michael’s Church, adjacent to his stately palace at Linlithgow, when a venerable stranger entered the aisle where the king knelt. The hair from his uncovered head flowed down over his shoulders, and his blue robe was confined by a linen girdle. With an air of majesty he walked up to the kneeling king, and said, “Sire, I am sent to warn thee not to proceed in thy present undertaking, for if thou dost it shall not fare well either with thyself or those who go with thee.” He vanished then in the awe-stricken crowd. But this was not the only warning. At midnight, prior to the departure of the troops for the south, it is related that a voice not mortal proclaimed a summons from the market cross, where proclamations were usually read, calling upon all who should march against the English to appear within the space of forty days before the court of the Evil One. Sir Walter Scott says that this summons, like the apparition at Linlithgow, was probably an attempt by those averse to the war to impose upon the superstitious temper of James IV. But the king started at the head of the finest army, and supported by the strongest artillery-train, that had down to that time been brought into the field by any Scottish monarch. He entered England August 22d. without having formed any definite plan of action. He wasted two days on the Till, besieged Norham for a week, when it surrendered, and then besieged Ford. These delays gave the English time to assemble. King James, as above related, captured Lady Heron at Ford. She was beautiful and deceitful, and soon enthralled the gay king in her spells, while all the time she was in communication with the English. Thus James wasted his time in dalliance, and, as Scott tells us,

“The monarch o’er the siren hung, And beat the measure as she sung, And, pressing closer and more near, He whispered praises in her ear.”

All the time the energetic Earl of Surrey was marshalling the English hosts, and, marching with twenty-six thousand men northward through Durham, received there the sacred banner of St. Cuthbert. On September 4th. Surrey challenged James to battle, which the king accepted against the advice of his best councillors. The Scots had become restive under the king’s do-nothing policy, and many of them left the camp and returned home with the booty already acquired. James selected a strong position on Flodden Hill, with both flanks protected and having the deep and sluggish waters of the Till flowing in front. Surrey advanced and reconnoitred, and then sent the king a herald requesting him to descend into the plain, as he acted ungallantly in thus practically shutting himself up in a fortress. The king would not admit the herald. Surrey then attempted a stratagem. Crossing the Till on the 8th, he encamped at Barmoor Wood, about two miles from the Scottish position, concealing his movement from the enemy. On the 9th he marched down the Till to near its confluence with the Tweed, and recrossed to the eastern bank. This, too, was uninterrupted by the Scots, who remained strangely inactive, though it is recorded that the chief Scottish nobles implored the king to attack the English. The aged Earl Angus begged him either to assault the English or retreat. “If you are afraid, Angus,” replied the king, “you can go home.” The master of artillery implored the king to allow him to bring his guns to bear upon the English, but James returned the reply that he would meet his antagonist on equal terms in a fair field, and scorned to take an advantage. Then Surrey drew up his line between James and the Border, and advanced up the valley of the Till towards the Scots. The king set fire to the temporary huts on the hillside where he had been encamped, and descended to the valley, the smoke concealing the movements of each army from the other; but Surrey’s stratagem was thus successful in drawing him from his strong position. The English van was led by Lord Thomas Howard, Surrey commanding the main body, Sir Edward Stanley the rear, and Lord Dacre the reserves. The Scottish advance was led by the Earls of Home and Huntley, the king leading the centre, the Earls of Lennox and Argyle the rear, and the reserves, consisting of the flower of the Lothians, were under the Earl of Bothwell. The battle began at four in the afternoon, when the Scottish advance charged upon the right wing of the English advance and routed it. Dacre promptly galloped forward with his reserves, and restored the fortunes of the day for the English right. The main bodies in the mean time became engaged in a desperate contest. The Scottish king in his ardor forgot that the duties of a commander were distinct from the indiscriminate valor of a knight, and placed himself in front of his spearmen, surrounded by his nobles, who, while they deplored the gallant weakness of such conduct, disdained to leave their sovereign unprotected. Dacre and Howard, having defeated the Scottish wing in front of them, at this time turned their full strength against the flank of the Scottish centre. It was a terrific combat, the Scots fighting desperately in an unbroken ring around their king. The battle lasted till night, and almost annihilated the Scottish forces. Of all the splendid host, embracing the flower of the nobility and chivalry of the kingdom, only a few haggard and wounded stragglers returned to tell the tale. The English victors lost five thousand slain, and the Scots more than twice that number, and among them the greatest men of the land. They left on the field their king, two bishops, two mitred abbots, twenty-seven peers and their sons, and there was scarcely a family of any position in Scotland that did not lose a relative there. The young Earl of Caithness and his entire band of three hundred followers perished on the field. The body of the dead king, afterwards found by Dacre, was taken to Berwick and presented to his commander, who had it embalmed and conveyed to the monastery of Sheyne in Surrey. The poetic instincts of the Scots were deeply moved by the woes of the fatal field of Flodden, and innumerable poems and ballads record the sad story, the crowning work of all being Scott’s Marmion.

BAMBOROUGH AND GRACE DARLING.

North of Flodden Field, and not far distant, is the Scottish Border, which in this part is made by the river Tweed, with Berwick at its mouth. The two kingdoms, so long in hot quarrel, are now united by a magnificent railway-bridge, elevated one hundred and twenty-five feet above the river and costing $600,000. For miles along the coast the railway runs almost upon the edge of the ocean, elevated on the cliffs high above the sea, while off the coast are Holy Isle and Lindisfarne. Here St. Cuthbert was the bishop, and its abbey is a splendid ruin, while on the rocky islet of Farne he lived a hermit, encompassing his cell with a mound so high that he could see nothing but the heavens. Two miles from Farne, on the mainland, was the royal city of Bebban Burgh, now Bamborough, the castle standing upon an almost perpendicular rock rising one hundred and fifty feet and overlooking the sea. This was King Ida’s castle, a Border stronghold in ancient times whose massive keep yet stands. It is now a charity-school, a lighthouse, and a life-saving station. Thirty beds are kept in the restored castle for shipwrecked sailors, and Bamborough is to the mariner on that perilous coast what the convent of St. Bernard is to the traveller in the Alps. Here, at this Border haven, we will close this descriptive tour by recalling Bamborough’s most pleasant memory that of Grace Darling. She was a native of the place, and was lodged, clothed, and educated at the school in Bamborough Castle. Her remains lie in Bamborough churchyard under an altar-tomb bearing her recumbent figure and surmounted by a Gothic canopy. She is represented lying on a plaited straw mattrass and holding an oar. All this coast is beset with perils and wrecks have been frequent. The islet of Farne and a cluster of other rocks off shore add to the dangers, and on some of them there are lighthouses. One of these rocks Longstone Island Grace Darling rendered memorable by her intrepidity in perilling her life during the storm of September, 1838. Her father was the keeper of Longstone Light, and on the night of September 6 the Forfarshire steamer, proceeding from Hull to Dundee, was wrecked there. Of fifty-three persons on board, thirty-eight perished, and on the morning of the 7th, Grace, then about twenty-three years of age, discovered the survivors clinging to the rocks and remnants of the steamer, in imminent danger of being washed off by the returning tide. With her parents’ assistance, but against their remonstrance, Grace launched a boat, and with her father succeeded in rescuing nine of them, while six escaped by other means. Presents and demonstrations of admiration were showered upon her from all parts of the kingdom, and a public subscription of $3500 was raised for her benefit. Poor Grace died four years later of consumption. A monument to her has been placed in St. Cuthbert’s Chapel on Longstone Island, and upon it is this inscription, from Wordsworth:

“Pious and pure, modest, and yet so brave, Though young, so wise though meek, so resolute.

“Oh that winds and waves could speak Of things which their united power called forth From the pure depths of her humanity! A maiden gentle, yet at duty’s call Firm and unflinching as the lighthouse reared On the island-rock, her lonely dwelling-place; Or, like the invincible rock itself, that braves, Age after age, the hostile elements, As when it guarded holy Cuthbert’s cell.

“All night the storm had raged, nor ceased, nor paused, When, as day broke, the maid, through misty air, Espies far off a wreck amid the surf, Beating on one of those disastrous isles Half of a vessel, half no more; the rest Had vanished!”