and the wood was all boiled piecemeal in a solution of potash, and then put together again. The work has gone on under the superintendence of Dean Howson, by voluntary contributions -Dissenters contributing with others—and has cost enormous sums. There is a great chandelier costing a fabulous amount, which will never be lighted again on account of the tremendous heat of the burners. It all forms a wilderness of carving and gilding. I walked about with the verger the customary round, and then stepped alone into the cloisters. Here was no "restoration." Here were pillars gnawed nearly in two by the "corroding tooth of time;" here the groined roof was black with the clouds of years. The cloisters inclosed a little square of shrubbery, green as emerald; the ever old and the ever new were here. Man's work falling to blackness and decay; God's work renewed by the perpetually-recurring miracle of the spring-time. It was easy to people this shadowy place with the dead and gone. Here paced the votaries of an ancient faith; here, under black cowl and gown, were hidden the lives of men; here, perchance, the ambitious dreamed their dreams of churchly power; here, perchance, were quenched the longings of a vain world; here, it may be, some heart did break in solitude.

We attended the choral service in the cathedral in the evening, we saw the procession of robed priests and choristers, and watched the dim shadows gather in the lofty arches overhead, and the light fading out of the gorgeous windows of blue and green and gold. The organ roared like the wind in the tree-tops, and echoed far in the dim and distant chapels, and the boys' voices rose high and clear, or sank soft and low, as they sang of faith in better things beyond; of a temple not made with hands, greater than man has ever builded. And leaving them singing, we took our leave of strange, beautiful old Chester.

OLD SHREWSBURY.

"We fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock."—Falstaff.

OST travelers going from Liverpool to London, take the

try." But it occurred to me that manufacturing cities could be seen in America, and that I had already seen Pittsburgh, the American Birmingham, while, on the other hand, cathedrals and castles a thousand years old could not be seen in my own, my native land—at least, not without waiting until sometime in the year 2776; and so I determined to travel by the Severn Valley route, which takes in its course several very old places, and, besides, affords a panorama of the Welsh mountains. And so, journeying through Chester and Wrexham, I came unto Her Majesty's old town of Shrewsbury.

The first piece of fortune that befell me, was, that by pure chance I came upon a certain English inn, where I did "take mine ease." Such a dignified and gracious landlady, or rosy waiting-maid, or thoroughgoing " Boots," or snowy and mountainlike bed, or pleasant dining-room, I did not expect to see again in all the Queen's dominions, including Great Britain and Ireland and the town of Berwick-on-Tweed.

The view from my bed-room window when I looked out early in the morning, led across the red-tiled and black-slated roofs and amid a little forest of chimney-pots, to a green, which I think they

call in Shrewsbury the Kingsland, and beyond this was a high rise of ground and rows of poplars and scattered hedges, and beyond these the sky.

Looking out the front windows into the street, the view was shut in at a few yards by a curve in the street and the walls of a gray old church, as if the street had politely gone around the building out of respect for its old age. These old English streets do not make abrupt angles, but wind along their narrow way, up hill and down, as sinuous as a snake's track. "Lifting up mine eyes," in scriptural language, I saw the red-sandstone towers of the ancient castle of Shrewsbury, founded a thousand years ago.

A gentleman from Sheffield sat opposite at table; in fact, there was no one else in the room, for the Englishman loves to take his meals as nearly alone as possible, and the table d'hote will be the last thing introduced generally into conservative England. I think he had business to attend to in the city, but if so, he neglected it, for all that blessed forenoon we walked up and down, in and out of all the narrow, shady streets of Shrewsbury, without any definite purpose, talking of a hundred different things, and stopping occasionally to look or to rest.

Shrewsbury is one of the famous old towns of England, really more prominent four hundred years ago than now. In those "good old times" we read about, bloody work was done in the vicinity. Here, on the 21st of July, 1403, King Henry IV met the fiery-hearted Percy, better known by the name made famous by Shakspeare-Hotspur. Here the battle raged all the summer day, until 2,300 gentlemen and 6,000 common soldiers were killed. The next morning, Worcester and two other noblemen captured by the King's victorious forces were beheaded in Shrewsbury,

and afterward, the dead body of the gallant Hotspur having been found, the senseless corpse was beheaded and quartered, and the quarters fixed upon the gates of the town. Those were the "days of chivalry." Into this same town, also, David of Wales, a brother of the famous Llewellyn, was brought in chains and executed with circumstances of horrible barbarity. For whole centuries Shrewsbury was the scene of wars, tumults, skirmishes and sieges. It is all over now, and Englishmen go far away from the old town to die in battle, for, as we stepped into the new church of St. Chad-so called to distinguish it from a very old church of the same name-we came upon the monuments of the men from the vicinity who fell in India during the great mutiny. It seems strange that boys go from these green old fields and shady lanes to lay their bones on the other side of the earth. But you see it everywhere. There is not an old parish church in England that does not contain the memorials of English soldiers who died in Spain, in Belgium, in India, in America, everywhere. The most prominent object in Shrewsbury is the immense column erected in honor of Lord Hill, who fought all over Europe in the great wars against Napoleon, carried on for many bloody yearsfor what?

One of the glories of Shrewsbury is its grammar school, which had 290 scholars three hundred years ago. Many men famous in England have been educated at this school, but the only one whose name is well known in America is, I regret to say, that of the infamous Judge Jeffries. It seems strange that such a bloody-minded beast could ever have been a school-boy with a soft heart in such a quaint, quiet old town.

My Sheffield friend and I came at last to the castle. It is now

a private residence, and occupied by a family named Downard, though it is the property of the Duke of Cleveland, who seldom or never visits it. We wandered into the court-yard, now devoted to the greenest of grass and the brightest of flowers and clumps of trees and shrubbery, before we were aware that we were on private property. Apologizing to a lady in black whom we met, for the intrusion, we were about to withdraw, when she politely invited us to inspect the premises and enjoy the view from the tower, and gave, beside, much information about the town and vicinity. Standing on the tower we looked down upon the Severn, which runs at the base of the mount on which the castle is built. This was, then, the “gentle Severn with the sedgy bank," that Shakspeare speaks of; and so came back to memory the old lines about the ashes of Wickliffe being cast into the Avon:

"The Avon to the Severn runs,

The Severn to the sea;

And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad,

Wide as the waters be."

Our walk was finished at noon, but in the evening I took a long stroll alone, going to "the Quarry," a famous place in Shrewsbury. It is not a quarry at all, but a piece of ground sloping to the Severn, and surrounded on three sides by double rows of immense lime trees, a tree resembling the American linn, but growing to a great height. The trees, many of them planted in 1719, form an archway of green over the path which the sun of noon can hardly penetrate. Then I wandered through the old streets, across the English bridge with its time-worn railing, to the old abbey with a statue, supposed to be that of Edward III, high up in front, facing the sun and storm as it has done for