while the internal canals make their port an entrepot for the stuffs of Leeds and Manchester, and the steel wares of Sheffield and Birmingham; a competition which occasionally appears to threaten the prosperity of Liverpool. Hull beheld the first blood of the civil wars shed under its walls in 1642; but it is York which more especially recalls historical reminiscences; and while projecting a longer excursion into the county on my return, I do not intend to quit the noble capital where I now reside till 'I take the road for 'Scotland; nor shall I even now omit a survey of the antique ruins of Fountains Abbey, and Kirkstall, as well as the more modern architecture of the vast but cumbrous ancient castle of Howard.

York constitutes the point of union of three great districts, into which Yorkshire is divided, the East, West, and North Riding. Does not the word Riding imply the extent of ground which a horseman can traverse in a day? Antiquaries close your mouth, by apprizing you that Riding is an old Saxon word signifying third. Science is nowa-days very dogmatic; and we no longer live in such times as when the thoughtless Wamba* exercised the subtlety of his companion in the oddities of the Saxon and Norman idioms, without troubling himself about the ridicule of antiquaries.

See the 1st Chap. of Ivanhoe, where the novelist fenters on the stage after the manner of Shakspeare.

LETTER LXXIV.

TO MR. F. GILBERT, AT ARLES.

LIKE every waning metropolis, which sees more modern cities founded by industry and commerce, enlarging, embellishing, and peopling themselves out of its parent population, and succeeding to its former importance in the state, York has to seek the titles of barren illustration in the annals of history, or the vestiges of departed grandeur. A native, as I myself am, of a city which grounds its chief boast on the antiquity of its origin and the dusty pomp of its ruins, it is not without proportionate sympathy that I listen to the men of York, when they tell us: "You are in the antient Eboracum founded by the Romans. Compare the plan of our city with that of Rome, and you will be struck with the resemblance. At a mile and a half distance you perceive three hillocks, which have preserved the name of the Emperor Severus; that prince made York his chief residence; it was there he received the homage and tribute of all the royal courtiers of the Roman eagle it was at York he died; and yon* three hills composed his tomb. One century later, York witnessed the death and apotheosis of an

*It is probable, with deference to the good citizens of York, that these three hills are natural.

other emperor, Constantius Chloris.

His son,

Constantine the Great, was born within our walls of an English mother, and it was there he assumed the purple. We possess near St. Mary's Abbey, the foundations of a temple of Bellona, and the remains of a tower, still called the Roman. In coming from London you entered by the gate called Mickle Gate Bar; † that also is a Roman portal."

I smiled to myself, while I recalled to mind how, in a similar manner, I had enacted the cicerone of the deserted streets of the ancient capital of the Gauls, to a stranger, whom I sought to interest by observing: "Yon is a Roman theatre; there a Roman column; that obelisk, whose apex has been alternately usurped by the sun of Louis XIV., the red cap of Jacobinism, and the eagle of Buonaparte, had for its first emblem, the eagle of Marius. Beyond is the chateau de la Trouille, erst inhabited by Constantine." And thus, the citizens of York, as well as of Arles, forgetting the present in the past, indulge themselves in the fancy that there still linger some drops of Roman blood in the pulses of their hearts. "Vanity of vanities," &c.

York, after all, is not rich in Roman vestiges; but York has been the capital of the kingdom of Northumberland. William of Normandy besieged it, and reduced it by famine in 1070. In 1160

• Helena.

This gate in the middle ages was decorated with the heads of several politica! victims.-Shakspeare (Henry VI.) places the head of Richard, Duke of York, killed at the battle of Wakefield, among them.

one of the first English parliaments was held there; and all the superior courts of the kingdom held their sittings there for seven years, in the reign of Edward I. At that period, York constituted one of the five ports of the kingdom: but no doubt the river Ouse then ran in a deeper bed, or rather, perhaps, the Roman gallies, and the Saxon and Norman vessels, were little more than lighters, when compared to the floating citadels constructed at the present day in the Chatham and Portsmouth dock-yards. York has more especially figured in the civil wars of the red and white rose; and five miles from its walls, on the plain of Marston Moor, the first of those battles was fought by Charles I. which concluded in bringing that king to the block. It supplies the subject of one of the songs in Rokeby.

York is rather an ill built town, containing about 15,000 inhabitants; its modern edifices exhibit nothing worthy of remark; neither the Town Hall nor the theatre, nor the bridges over the Foss and Ouse. Its old castle, built by William the Conqueror, is now converted into the county prison. The poet Montgomery, under sentence for offences against the laws restricting the press, was twice confined there; and it was there he composed his two charming epistles, called the Pleasures of Prison, which remind one of Gresset's Chartreuse.

The York assizes are famous, and the Guildhall is a gothic palace, the architecture of which is not deficient in merit. The York races annually attract a great influx of wealth. A festival not less

dear to the Yorkshire people is also held every autumn in the cathedral: it is a grand concert, which consists of more than five hundred musicians. Who will deny, after this, that the English are a musical people? I presume, however, that these maestri and performers are not all graduated musical doctors of Oxford or Cambridge. The important part enacted by the city government in the midst of all these solemnities may be easily conceived. Under the above designation must be classed the mayor, who, like him of London, is entitled Lord, the Recorder, twelve aldermen, two sheriffs, seventy-two common councilmen, and twenty-four honorary sheriffs, composing the cabinet council of his lordship. This latter magistrate wears a rich scarlet mantle, and a chain of massive gold; all these insignia of authority are generally much respected by the people, and the individual invested with them is in the right to consider them as a constituent portion of his dignity.* The office of Lord Mayor of York is worth £840 per annum; but several aldermen have been known to accept the place, and voluntarily renounce the revenue. When such magistracies become the almost exclusive patrimony, as in France, of a few patrician families, they ought to be entirely gratuitous. But, among us, the emancipation, by some means or other, of our maires and commoners, from the tyranny of the prefects, is especially a

* I shall not quote Figaro's mot on the subject of the lawyer's robe, but without descending much lower, I have sometimes heard a head drummer of the Imperial Guard say, that when he was equipped in his gold-laced coat, his plume and cane, he felt inspired by the courage of six Cæsars.