Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., he landed in Wales, and when he found himself deserted by his army, he took refuge in Conway Castle, from which, however, he was enticed by his enemies. You may, perhaps, remember that in the poem "We are Seven" the following lines occur:

"And where are they? I pray you tell;'

She answered, 'Seven are we,
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.'

LESSON XVIII.

Conway to the Mersey.

FROM Great Orme's Head the coast line of England runs rapidly to the east, then curves round to the north-west, until we reach the borders of Cumberland.

On this part of the coast there are several indentations of importance. We have the estuary of the Dee, which separates Flintshire from Cheshire. At its mouth this estuary is about six miles wide, but it narrows as it proceeds inland. This estuary is dry at low water, and resembles an extensive dreary waste, covered with sand and ooze, through which the river runs in a narrow and insignificant stream. But when the tide is in, it presents an entirely different appearance, forming a noble arm of the

sea.

About nine miles above the head of the estuary stands the city of Chester, which takes its name from a Latin word castra, meaning "camp." There can be no doubt that Chester was an important Roman station, and was the most considerable place in a large tract of country in the Roman times, and continued to be so when the Romans were obliged to withdraw their forces from Britain. All

through the Saxon and Norman periods of our history Chester occupies a prominent place. A modern writer thus speaks of it :

"Chester is in many respects one of the most interesting cities in England. It consists of two great streets, cutting each other at right angles, with others diverging from them, very much, it is thought, according to the plan of a Roman camp. The city is o: e of the very few places in England which have maintained, in a tolerable state of completeness, the walls which were erected for their defence in remote ages; at no other place are they so entire as at Chester. Though no longer useful for defence, they afford an agreeable promenade, with pleasant views at various points of the surrounding country. They are nearly two miles in circuit. To a stranger, the most striking objects in Chester are the walls and the "rows." The rows are a kind of wide footpath, raised above the level of the streets, at the height of the first storey of a house; and covered overhead by the second storey of the house; as though, in fact, the front and partition walls of the first storeys were taken away, and the rooms converted into connected walks, with shops at the back. The two great intersecting streets are, for the most part, constructed on this plan. A large number of the houses are the quaint, half-timbered houses, with ornamented gables of the sixteenth century, and they, with the rows, render the streets. of Chester perhaps the most picturesque of those of any English city."

Chester has become the centre of an extensive railway system, affording easy communication with all parts of the United Kingdom. The railway station at Chester is not surpassed by any station in England.

A large peninsula separates the estuary of the Dee from

that of the Mersey. This latter divides Cheshire from Lancashire. This estuary extends from the sea to the point where it is joined by the Weaver. It is of varying breadth. Opposite Liverpool it is a mile and a quarter wide, but as it advances inland the breadth increases, until at some points it is more than three miles wide.

LESSON XIX.

The Mersey to Preston.

ON the right bank of the Mersey stands Liverpool, the second commercial city in England. The progress of Liverpool is unexampled in the history of any other city in the kingdom. In his History of England, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the state of England in 1685, says :-" It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago, were hamlets, without a Parish Church, or desolate moors, inhabited only by grouse or red deer. Nor has the change been less signal in those outlets by which the products of the English looms and forges are poured forth over the whole world. At present, Liverpool contains about 300,000 inhabitants. The shipping registered at the port amounts to between 400,000 and 500,000 tons. Into her custom-house has been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as great as the whole income of the English Crown in 1685. The receipts of her post-office, ever since the great reduction of the duty, exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays, and warehouses are among the wonders of the world. In the days of Charles II., Liverpool was described as a rising town, which had recently made great advances, and which maintained. a profitable intercourse with Ireland and the sugar colonies.

But the population can hardly have exceeded 4000; the shipping was about 1400 tons, less than the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class, and the whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be estimated at more than 200." This was written in 1850. Since that date, Liverpool has increased at a rate unknown in any former period of its history. Its population is now considerably over half a million. Its docks cover something like 700 acres, and it has a quay frontage of over sixteen miles. Nearly half of all the exports of the kingdom pass from Liverpool; and it may be said to have almost a monopoly of the imports of cotton.

Opposite Liverpool, on the Cheshire coast, lies the rival town of Birkenhead, the rapid growth of which may be attributed to the formation of commodious docks. There is constant ferry accommodation between Liverpool and Birkenhead.

After leaving the Mersey, the coast curves round until we reach the estuary of the Ribble, at the head of which stands Preston, a town of great antiquity, and supposed to be called priest's town from its religious houses, traces of which still remain. In the rebellion of 1715, the Jacobite insurgents entered the town, and attempted to defend it, but, after a brave resistance, they were forced to surrender. The celebrated Arkwright, the inventor of cotton-spinning machinery, was born in Preston in 1732. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and was bred to the trade of a barber. Great efforts were being made at this time to improve the mode of cottonspinning. The spinning-jenny, invented by Hargreaves in 1767, gave the means of spinning twenty or thirty threads at once, with no more labour than had been required to spin a single thread. The thread spun by the jenny could not be used, except as weft, not being hard or

firm enough for warp. Arkwright supplied the deficiency by the invention of the spinning-frame-that wonderful piece of machinery, which spins a vast number of threads of any degree of fineness or hardness, leaving to man merely to feed the machine with cotton, and to join the threads when they happen to break. The first model of the machine was set up in the parlour of the house belonging to the Free Grammar School at Preston. By this invention, Mr. Arkwright acquired great wealth, and increased greatly the demand for labour, and added enormously to the riches and comfort of the civilised world. He was knighted by George III. in 1786, and died in 1792.

LESSON XX.

Preston to Barrow-in-Furness.

FROM the Ribble the coast again curves round until we reach the river Wire. On the north-western extremity of the peninsula formed by this river and the Irish Sea, stands the modern town of Fleetwood, named after Sir P. Hesketh Fleetwood, by whom the town was laid out with much taste. Its owes its origin entirely to the extension of railway and steam-vessel communication, and was intended as a rival to Liverpool. In this it has failed, but it possesses considerable traffic with Ireland and the Isle of Man.

Beyond Fleetwood we enter the spacious inlet called Morecambe Bay. At the head of an offset from this bay, stands, on the Lune, the ancient town of Lancaster, the county town of Lancashire.

The depth of water in Morecambe Bay is little, except in the channels formed by the rivers, and a considerable part becomes at low water an expanse of sand, across which there is a road passable, though not without danger,