WHICH MUST BE RECOLLECTED TOWARDS THE tower of corroded, ruddy masonry, appears END OF THE STORY. RARE old city of Chester! Even in these days of rocket-like travelling a man might fly all over Great Britain and Ireland, with an extra day ticket for Berwick-upon-Tweed, before he saw anything half so fine as the mouldering old red sand-stones which form the walls and towers of that venerable place; or looked upon anything half so fair as the prospect of vale and mountain, wooded headland and spire-pointed plain, that surrounds it. even in dull weather, to be glowing in a perpetual sunset, in the enjoyment of a calm old age. And the cloisters, whilst they teach a lesson on decay, have the same tranquil look, communicating their repose to the loitererharassed and heart-weary as he may be-in their still seclusion; engendering hope and peace, and calling forth all the better feelings. The hum of the peopled city does not break the reigning quietude. The grass is. fresh and green in the enclosure; and a few fragile climbing flowers wind their delicate stems about the worn fretwork, and nestle in the indentations of the tracery as the shadows of their leaves tremble in the patches of light that fall pleasantly upon the gravestones and pavement below. It is, in veriest sooth, a glorious relic of the early times, when the British Lion was a mere awkward cub, and the lady whom he protects,-whose most authentic portraits we are now only acquainted with from the half A marvellous city too is commercial, every penny of infantile reward,—had not even ar- day, common-place Chester-that is, if it can rived at the fatal period of a certain age. You be so. For the passenger's footway lies right might almost conceive that it had stood the through the first-floor fronts of the housesattacks of Time so long, as at last to disgust which are cleared away altogether, and above him altogether with the uselessness of his the shop, of ordinary normal position, by the endeavors to destroy it; and that he had con- road side; and thus, the back drawing-rooms, sequently gone away at some epoch far back or whatever else they may be, are turned into in the darkness of the days of old, and never more shops; and great is the puzzle of the cared to come back again to the neighborhood. stranger as to whether the road-way is down For there are its old black beams and in the cellar, or he is up stairs on the landing, carved uneven gables-its quaint supports or the house has turned itself out of window; and discolored panes of glass, quivering and affording a literal proof of that curious state blinking in the wide rickety casements-its of domestic affairs so often spoken of. And overhanging floors and rude, uneven steps and pavement, just as they were when the History of England would scarcely have made a tract long enough to last the lounge round upon the city walls, along whose whole WOK 20:UN 34 first he fancies the 'row-as it is termed— is like the Quadrant, with the road excavated a floor lower, and shops made under the pavement; and then it reminds him of & Thames-side tavern, with all the shutter wainscoats, that divide the large convivial room into so many little philandering ones, drawn away, and the windows knocked out. And, finally, he arrives at the conclusion that there is nothing else in the world at all like it, except the lithographs published by the enterprising librarians who live there. But very convenient is this arrangement for old ladies of weak minds who quail at meeting cattle and young ladies of extravagant ones who dote on shopping, in spite of the weather. For it raises the first above suspicion even of danger; and shelters the second from being favored with the visits of the clouds, who cannot here drop in upon them. And so, we opine, that umbrellas are yet unknown in Chester; and clogs and pattens are things to look and wonder at, worthy of a place in the museum of the Water Tower. One only inconvenience do the rows present convivial gentlemen, who won't go home till morning, under ordinary social circumstances, must be apt to descend suddenly into the valleys, which here and there break their continuity in the shape of bye-streets. But this may be amended in time by the good gentlemen, who pay such pen-and-ink attention to the sanatory condition of large towns, and form a grotto for Hygeia at the bottom of an inkstand. Even the chronicles of Chester are as quaint as the place. Think of King Edward the First, when he was here in 1277, ordering that every body who could spend twenty pounds a year should be made a knight! Why, you might have stopped at a hostelry then, and ordered a 'Sir' to bring you a Jack of humming ale; or bought your hood, or jerkin, of a real Lady' at the first shop you chose to turn in at. Read on, too, how in 1356, the Mayor's feast, comprising all the delicacies of the season, cost only eleven shillings and ten-pence! A happy time was that for his Lordship; the most unrelenting, begrudging Common Council that ever assembled would not have denied him a banquet every day had he chosen to have had one. And some hundred years after this there was a famine; and the people made bread of feathers-the only circumstance under which the citizens would not wish their bread to be "down' again." And we might tell, moreover, how in the fifteenth century, a goose was eaten on the top of the St. Peter's steeple by the parson and his friends; how, in 1541, the members of the corporation were to be chosen from the 'saddest and most substantial citizens': how a score and a half of years afterwards the sheriffs fought, and whacked each other soundly with their wands until they were broken: and how a man was confined in Northgate for publicly stating a great scandal about Queen Elizabeth, which nothing should induce us to write down in detail; but be sure that the Earl of Leicester had a great deal-if not all-to do with it. We might ponder over these things, and many more; as duly set forth by careful local historians. But our story is of the present time; and we would have you, consequently, forget the Chester of the middle ages; and cherish no more of its reminiscences that will inevitably force themselves upon you when standing in its busy streets of the present day; when its rock-based fortifications form a peaceful walk, and the prolongation of life, instead of slaughter, is their object; when reclaimed greenswards and broad corn-fields lie where the river Dee once came up to the city; and the heavy dogged barge is pulled along the canal, or the steam-train flies-screaming, panting, and glowing-on the railway beneath the walls. To Chester then, a part from its associations, and at a period not beyond the average recollection of all who may read our tale. It was a wild dark evening in March. Unless the almanack had informed one that spring was coming on, nobody would ever have believed it from the specimen-prospectus it issued of its intentions: perhaps as near the truth, however, as a prospectus generally is. It was much more likely, that winter, being on the eve of breaking up and going away, was having a grand finishing bit of fun to himself, and knocking every thing about, right and left, as boys at school in similar circumstances, do the inkstands, forms, and slates, as well as every thing that the usher may unguardedly leave about pertaining to himself. The wind came in wonderful gusts, surging after one another, like the waves of a mighty aerial sea; breaking into separate blasts as it struck against the sturdy, rugged edges of the towers that encountered it, until each of them became a separate tempest on a small scale, and pervaded every street, without apparent regard to any particular point of the compass, turning signs upside down, roaring and brawling along the covered rows; and sparring right and left with what few lamps it encountered-the lights of which had a hard time of it-for very wilfulness. The rain would have come down if it could, but the wind would not give it a chance; so it was obliged to be content with shooting down a few large drops between the squalls, and then being blown into mist, was carried away, against its will to the Welsh mountains, to sit up all night, and form the fogs of the morning. Not many people were about. The shops had long closed, for the keepers expected no more customers; and the very inns had put put up their public-room shutters in hopeless despair of fresh travellers, when a country vehicle drove somewhat hurriedly into the yard of one of the hotels, and startled the ostler from his pipe and shove-halfpenny in the tap, by the announcement of its arrival ; |