Yet York is not dependent on this for its ancient eminence as the principal city in Britain. Two Roman emperors lived and died within its limits, and the son of one of them was Constantine the Great. He was in York at the time of his father's death, and the Sixth Legion proclaimed him Emperor. Three of the most learned jurists of Rome lived in York, men who helped to frame a code of laws that is the model-one might almost say the final authority-both in England and France, whenever cases that come under its rulings are similar.

It is a weary tale to tell how York followed the fortunes of the rest of England when the Romans finally left the country. Barbarian hordes, of whom we know almost nothing, overran the iand, and all English history is for a time lost in chaos. More light breaks upon it in the Saxon times; but we must come to the eleventh century of the Christian era before we emerge into any reliable narrative, and unhappily that is a gloomy one. The Danes, who had captured York, put the Norman garrison to the sword; and William exacted the terrible penalty of depopulating the lands between York and Durham, and putting to death, historians say, 100,000 of the inhabitants. Very soon after this York again became famous as the centre of great ecclesiastical power, and, still standing in St. Mary's gardens, we can see the three great towers of the minster that held such unbounded sway during the middle ages, These abbey gardens have a belt of fine elms, and in some. points of view the towering minster forms a noble picture in combination with them and the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey.-Nearly every traveller has seen York Minster, and those who have not are familiar with its appearance, both from drawings and descriptions. Suffice it to say that, if a line were fixed on any angle of the building and drawn tightly round it, it would measure about a quarter of a mile, and every part of this vast edfice is covered with the richest and grandest carvings known in architecture. Every period of design is represented, from the rude Norman imitations of the Roman work, with which the island was even then studded, to the time when the eighth Henry laid his heavy hand on monasteries; and as I write this I am reminded, by referring to a date, that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the day on which one Jonathan Martin fired York Minster and burned the wonderful carvings of the stalls and roof. A national subscription amounting to some 65,000l. was soon raised to restore it, but such a sum would have to be more than doubled to enable a contractor to perform similar work at the present day. A second fire almost as destructive broke out in another part of the vast pile only eleven years after.-Some recollections of this minster are not very pleasant. The Jews

used to keep in its wardenship a record of their loans, and the populace, not remembering that the borrowers became borrowers of their own free will, broke into the cathedral, and burned all the documents. But unhappily they did not do this without having previously committed great and wanton outrage on a law-abiding people. When Richard I. came to the throne, the Lion Heart' permitted any amount of massacre and persecution to be perpetrated on his Jewish subjects. These were very numerous and powerful in York; indeed, their principal quarters in Market Street and Layerthorpe were until recently called Jubbargate and Jewbury. A simple narration of the massacre seems hardly credible, especially if we remember that in those times the principal actors were merely mulct in nominal fines. One Benet appears to have been the principal Jew in the city, and his house was attacked by an armed mob, and he and his family murdered. About 500 others, being forewarned, fled to the castle, and took their gold with them; and as they refused permission to the warden to enter, the sheriff permitted the populace, and especially their debtors, to attack them in their stronghold. Hunger overcame them, but as they could not hope for humanity from their assailants, they set fire to the castle, and hid such wealth as could not be destroyed. Then these poor creatures slew each other to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy, and a few, offering to become Christians, surrendered to the mob, but were immediately slain. Richard, who was in France, seemed to think the proceeding was hardly justifiable, and ordered a commission of inquiry, which closed the whole matter, very much in the interests of the wrong doers. We need not remove from the spot in St. Mary's Abbey grounds, where we are supposed to be taking a retrospect of York, before we are reminded of other scenes in history that gradually lead us on to a time when the chief city of the New World is singularly connected with the chief city of Yorkshire. The white rose of York was but a thorny one for England, as indeed may be said of its rival of Lancaster, and York was for a long time the centre of the feuds that raged between the contending houses. Looking back at this distance of time, how almost incredible it seems that Englishmen should have shed each other's blood so terribly for simply a war of succession! The merits of the candidates were not at all in question-if, indeed, they had any merits; it was merely a family dispute! The wars of Cromwell we can well understand; then, there was a great principle at stake. Liberty and freedom were fighting their battles against tyranny and the same issues were fought for in the great war of Independence. But in the Wars of the Roses the rivals signified

but little to the people, and the people were of no consequence at all in the eyes of the rivals. Yet the slain in a single battle-field in England have been as many as ten times the losses at Waterloo. There is no doubt that Falstaff's contemptuous Food for powder, food for powder: they'll fill a pit as well as better,' was the common style of language. And after the battle of Wakefield, as an example of how such times harden the mind, Queen Margaret ordered the Duke of York's head to be cut off and fixed on the top of Micklegate bar, with a paper crown:

Off with his head, and set it on York gates,

So York may overlook the town of York;

and there it remained for two years.

But in St. Mary's gardens there is another building called the King's Manor, and now used as a blind asylum, that figured prominently in the future of both America and England. In the year 1536, after the suppression of monasteries, the celebrated Yorkshire rebellion called the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' broke out. It was led by Robert Aske, who marched with 40,000 men to reinstate the monks and nuns in their religious houses. In York alone were nine great houses, besides eighteen parish churches, and many other religious establishments. The feeling in the city was strongly in favour of the old religion, and though it was very late at night when they returned, the friars sung matins the same night.' The rising was suppressed, and Aske executed; but this gave rise to the celebrated Council of the North,' of which, a century later, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, became president, He seems at first to have had some desire to side with the friends of freedom. When he was deposed from the office of Sheriff of Yorkshire, he was foremost in the House of Commons in urging the Petition of Right; his language then was that, 'If he did not faithfully insist for the common liberty of the subject to be preserved whole and entire, it was his desire that he might be set as a beacon on a hill, for all men else to wonder at.' And certainly he had his desire. He soon was admitted to a seat in the Royal Council, and in him his master found the most ready tool that perhaps his dominions afforded. He fairly outdid even Charles in his extravagant pretensions of Royal prerogative, and declared in so many words that he would vindicate the monarchy for ever from all restraint of subjects, and make the Royal will law to the end. There are two portraits of him by Vandyck: one at Wentworth House, in Yorkshire, and the other at Blenheim; in both he is dictating to his secretary before his execution, and the dark

VOL. XLI. NO. CLXI.

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defiant face, still full of purpose, and indeed not without a lock of hatred, almost haunts one's recollection after seeing either picture.

When Strafford was made the Lord President of the North he took up his abode in King's Manor,' shown on a previous page, and prepared the way for his representative, Laud, to stop all emigration to America. Strafford's arms are emblazoned over a door, and it is even said to have formed a charge against him that he had used a Royal palace to carry his armorial bearings, though this was innocency itself as compared with the lightest of the real charges against him. The arms, however, will always interest any stranger in visiting the city, and they are generally pointed out. Strafford went over as Lieutenant to Ireland, and Laud may almost be said to have ruled in England in his place. The Puritans, who desired to leave England and worship in their own manner in America, were stopped, and English gaols were filled almost to suffocation with some of the noblest Englishmen that ever lived. Pharaoh-like, he would not let them go even into the wilderness, and if a report of one of his embargoes is correct, verily he met his reward. There is a library in Liverpool called the 'Brown Library,' so called because it was built by Sir William Brown, a great American merchant, at a large cost, and presented to Liverpool as a free institution. It is very rich in historical works, and in one of these I saw it stated that Laud had stopped both Hampden and Cromwell from joining their friends in Massachusetts. Some colour is afforded to this statement by the circumstance that Hampden had actually purchased and paid for a tract of land on the Narragansett. Could Laud only have known what he was doing, he would most certainly have told them to rise up and go, and take their flocks, and their herds, and their little ones.

The house shown on the next page was the home of George Hudson, the great 'Railway King.' He was born in 1800, and apprenticed to a draper, but soon commenced business for himself, and speculated in railway stock. Success seemed to follow every undertaking he engaged in, and he was elected chairman of the North Midland railway. His acquaintance and friendship were sought by the highest personages in the land, and it was at last considered that his name on a board of directors was a guarantee of success. He has made by the premiums on shares as much as 100,000. in a single day. His connection with the South-Eastern Railway, however, led to exposures, shares soon fell with rapidity as great as that with which they had risen, and every board-room was closed against him. He retired to the Continent with what little of his once vast fortune he could save, and was spared

for many years to soliloquise on the transitory glory of human

crowns.

Yorkshire is the land of romance and poetry. The Cistercians, who always selected the most beautiful sites for their houses, had them studded over some parts of the country almost as closely as the rules of their order would permit. Turner used to say that Yorkshire contained the most beautiful scenery in England;

though, indeed, Derby can be said to hold its own against it. Not only religious houses, but the remains of baronial castles, abound in all directions, and these have continually figured in history.-If we take the Ripon road from York, we shall pass through the romantic town of Knaresborough, beautifully situated on the Nidd, which runs through a gorge, and is a succession of still clear pools and rapids. The castle here was once the residence of the brilliant but thoughtless Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II., and the man through whose assistance he endeavoured to throw off the yoke of the Barons; but they were made of rather sterner stuff than he had