now stands the pavement of a Roman house has been found, and in other places traces of their occupation have been detected by lynx-eyed antiquaries.

Here the British patriot, Carausius, proclaimed himself king, and after a troubled reign was treacherously murdered. Here Edwin, king of Northumbria, made his capital, until the town became the chief city of Deira. Then came the Danes, and as at Carlisle and Lincoln the name gata, or street, remains as a memorial of their stay, when Scandinavian viceroys ruled, and Northern rovers harried the adjacent plain, in place of gentle scholars of France, flocking to study among the MSS. which rendered the libraries of York famous, or in the schools, then one of the most flourishing academies of Europe, and wondering at the strange customs of the Culdees who filled its Minster. Stout Earl Siward had not been buried in the church of Galmanho, in Marygate, more than eleven years, when Tosti and Harold Harfager stormed the fortifications; and within two years William the Norman plundered the town and polluted the Minster. Another year passed, and then Edgar Atheling, with princely Danish jarls, and Earl Waltheof, demolished the castle, and slew many of the Norman garrison. Once more came King William, desolating and harrying the shire, destroying the citizens with hunger and the sword, because their town was the last stronghold and refuge of his enemies the English. From York to Durham, says Hemingburgh, all was desert-a lair of beasts and robbers, where the starving people eat the flesh of rats and dogs.

Times improved. German and Irish ships in the age of Malmesbury frequented the port; and only at rare intervals was the quiet broken by a massacre of Jews, who fled in vain to Clifford's Tower; by the awful ravages of the Black Death; by the burning of the suburbs; by the marauding Scots; the stir of law business in the courts of King's Bench and Chancery, which had been removed from London; by the beheadal of an archbishop; and still later by the siege, when Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester struck their camps to push towards Marston Moor; by the passing of Cromwell, announced with salvoes of artillery; and the march of Monk southward, to restore the British crown.

Our monarchs have kept Christmas in the old northern capital; have received the fealty of Scottish kings, laying down spear, crown, and saddle on the high altar in St. Peter's; have

married English princesses to the kings who did them homage; here Edward I. mustered his troops for his Scottish campaign; here his son, when flying before the Scots after Bannockburn, held a parliament (one of eight in all which have assembled at York); here Edward III. was married to Philippa of Hainault; here Edward IV. was crowned with the royal abacot, which had been found among Henry VI.'s baggage at Hexham, and Richard III. followed the precedent; here James I., on his way to take possession of the throne of England, touched for the king's evil in the Minster; and Charles I., beneath a canopy of state carried by the dean and canons, watched the Bishops of Ely and Winchester perform the meek office of the Maunday, having himself first knelt down in silent prayer at the entrance of the nave.

From coronations, and parliaments, and royal visits of Plantagenets, Normans, Tudors, and Stuarts, extrinsic honours to the old city, we may turn to its source of peculiar pride, that it has been the birthplace or residence of many distinguished persons. Robert the Hermit of Knaresborough; Alcuin, the friend of Charlemagne; Conyers Middleton, Elizabeth Montagu, Lindley Murray, Sir Thomas Herbert, the traveller; Etty, Flaxman; and Bishops Earle, Morton, Ferne, and Porteous. Nor must we forget that Dick Turpin's ride to York is yet a household memory among the centaurs of the Ridings, and the highwayman's grave is under the shadow of St. George's; much less shall we not give a passing thought to the friend of our childhood, Robinson Crusoe, mariner, born at York?

From the fourteenth up to the present century, the princes of the blood royal took their ducal title from the city, and the last of the Stuarts called himself Cardinal of York.

We shall not forget when we walk through Coney Street that Drake the historian lived in it; or in passing that Gent was buried in Petergate, and Burton in the Priory Church of the Holy Trinity; for local historians have nearly always posthumous reputation. How they loved the old buildings which still attract their readers;-the beautiful ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, so delicate and dainty in architecture, laid with the softest and greenest turf; its lesser hostry and gate-house; the remains of St. Leonard's Hospital, with its cloistral ambulatory, the hall and upper chapel, now desolate; the strange Roman multangular tower adjoining; the old water-tower by the river side; the fragments in the Castle; the stately Bars; the battlemented walls, with gateways, barbicans, and postern, and the relics of

domestic architecture seen in the Jacobean Manor-house; the carved spurs and brackets, bargeboards and finials, overhanging porches and timber superstructures; the Merchants' Hall, the timber-ceiled St. Anthony's Hospital, and the Guildhall with its triple alleys divided by oaken piers. What a wealth of interest for a long summer's day, to be supplemented by the ecclesiastical treasures lying in busy streets, or set far down some cool shadowy lane, the lantern of All Saints' Pavement, in which a beacon lamp lighted the traveller through the Galtres forest to the kindly shelter of a hostelry in York; the early Perpendicular lectern with a book chained to it in St. Crux; the altar coverings of stamped leather at St. Mary's Castlegate and St. Michael's; the stained glass, the carved wood, the sculptured stones, which would require pages to describe. We have reason to believe that the boys of All Saints, upon perambulation, no longer suffer corporal punishment at each bound, or inflict a vicarious chastisement on the unfortunate parish clerk's legs with bunches of sedge; and for some two centuries at least, the indecent proclamation of unlicensed merriment at Christmas-tide has ceased at the four great entrances of the town.

How soon the popular proverb may be realized is still a matter of doubt:

"Lincoln was, London was, and York shall be
The finest city of the three:"

whether when the great county shall have absorbed all the manufactures of England, or, as old Fuller suggests, when the river Thames shall flood the great arch of the bridge of Ouse, those who shall live to see the day alone will be able to decide. It is a question as nice as that which regulates the dignity of the Lord Mayor's wife, since Richard III. dubbed the city magnate my lord:

"My lord is a lord for a year and a day,
But my lady's a lady for ever and aye."

Thus, as we saunter from any point quietly towards the glory of York, there will be no portion of the walk without interest Parliament Street describes itself, Coney Street resolves its corruption into Koenig or King's Street, as in Conisburgh; Goodram Bar recalls Guthrum the Dane; Jubbergate marks the Jews' quarter, being a vulgar form of Jewbury or Jewry; Micklegate, with its stone sentinels, as the Great gate, was once furnished with ghastly heads brought from Towton Field, or