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A DAY IN YORK.

[The "New Monthly Magazine," October, 1857.]

In the August of the present year I visited York, on a bright day, when the repose of that usually quiet old city was broken by a great meeting-an agricultural, horticultural, and archæological invasion. Fat beeves and mysterious clod-compelling engines gathered wondering rustics in the streets and aristocratic patrons in the show-ground; graceful forms in gay attire moved within the ancient shadows of York; and many animated groups were scattered on the soft turf of those charming gardens which were once the secluded pleasance of the black-robed monks, but now surround the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society; while in the Museum itself a multitude of curious objects, from Saurian fossils to Shakspearian relics, had been gathered in honour of the occasion.

The journey to the old city was made through a country marked by many historical associations, and, like York itself, by the successive footsteps of the Britons and the Romans, the Saxons and the Danes. I left the smoky town of Newcastle as the sun's level rays fell upon its massive Norman keep and well-known spire, and saw the distant wood-environed towers of Durham stand out grandly against a sky irradiated by rich hues of sunset; and next, the plain tall spire of Darlington marked the southern limit of St. Cuthbert's ancient halidom; and then the cultivated plains and woods, church towers, and distant hills of Cleveland were seen in a mellowed light, for the sunset glories had faded into exquisite gradations of pale tint from gold to sapphire, for some time before the minster towers of York were visible, rising cold and grey against the eastern sky-those minster towers, which, seen from afar over the wide cultivated vale, so fitly mark the chief cathedral city of the northern province. And then,

pacing round the vast cathedral by moonlight, how solemn and impressive it looked when the rising moon lighted up its grey shadowy mass; and the dim outline, far above, of soaring roofs and towers and lonely pinnacles rose under the starry vault of summer night, and the gigantic buttresses and forms of traceried stone stood out in the soft radiance, relieved by deepest shadow, and the buildings of the cathedral-close stood in their quaint dark forms around. At such a time, when the busy inhabitants. are at length silent, and the streets, but lately thronged, are empty, images of the past come to take the place of actual life, and one is tempted to retrospect and contemplation. I thought of the days when no Christian minster hallowed this spot; and of the long space of time, from the coming of the Sixth Legion to Britain in the reign of Hadrian down to the departure of the Romans, during which York was the principal station of the whole province, and (more than London) the altera Roma of Britain, the residence of Roman emperors on their visits and of imperial legates in their absence, and the place where the emperors Severus and Constantius Chlorus died. I thought of the times when Eboracum-pre-eminent among Roman stations— stood here with all its temples, palaces, villas, and baths, the city inclosed by a wall with a rampart mound on the inner side and a fosse without, and four strong towers at the angles (of which a finely preserved specimen remains to this day in the Museum Gardens), and four gates, from which ran military roads that connected it with the roads which traversed Britain in every direction and crossed its lonely wastes and primeval forests, the road to the north for some distance out of the city being bordered by the tombs and memorials of the dead. And then, after a long dark interval, during which the Saxons set up Thor and Woden in the shrines consecrated by Helena, came the days when AngloSaxon bishops reared at York a Christian Church amidst the ruins of the Roman town; for there, twelve hundred and thirty years ago, Edwin, King of Northumbria-renouncing the superstitions of his fathers-received baptism at the hands of Paulinus; so that if Canterbury became what it did from the circumstance that Ethelbert, King of Kent, was there converted by Augustine the brother-missionary of Paulinus, York was the scene of an

event not less conspicuous in the history of the northern province. Wherever the Roman founded a colony he carried there the arts and luxuries of Rome, and he has left elaborate pavements and other remains to tell of his footsteps and abode under our northern skies. In like manner, elaborate churches and episcopal schools of learning rose where the early bishops raised the standards of Christ; and so eminent had the school of York become in the eighth century, that scholars resorted to it even from the empire of Charlemagne, and the illustrious Alcuin sent to this his native city for classical manuscripts that could not be found in France. And just as, in the days of the Romans, ships built in the Roman ports of Chichester and Colchester resorted to York, so, in Alcuin's time, it was a great mercantile emporium, visited by vessels from foreign ports, and was at all events one of the greatest, if not the chief, of Anglo-Saxon cities.

But if a walk by moonlight beneath the towers of the great minster which, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, succeeded to the cathedral of the Anglo-Saxon bishops, tempts to retrospect, the whole aspect of the old city, even by garish day, seems to reflect the times when medieval York stood the shocks of war, and acquired its renown in the history of England. Many of its old buildings have yielded in modern days to "progress" and other enemies within the walls; but still there are few of our historic cities that retain features more characteristic of bygone times than York. Half the churches, and many of the houses with overhanging and ornamented fronts, so characteristic of the Tudor and the Stuart days, have disappeared, but York still affords some interesting specimens of early domestic architecture; and you see gateways under which Plantagenets have passed, and portals from which you almost expect them to re-appear, and a few tavern signs that look as if they might have been. familiar to Froissart and Chaucer. There are even some streets (Stonegate, for instance) which are so antique in aspect, that the imagination loves to repeople them with the moving pageants they witnessed in bygone times; but the present aspect of York must be very unlike what it was in the days when the pious old city rejoiced in more than forty parish churches, as it did when

Henry V. and his queen were at York, on their "progress" after her magnificent coronation. The Augustine, Dominican, Gilbertine, Carmelite, Franciscan, and Benedictine orders had then their monasteries here, the chief and oldest of them being St. Mary's Abbey, a Norman foundation, of the church of which, as rebuilt in the thirteenth century, the beautiful and well-known ruins dignify the Museum gardens. There were also sixteen hospitals, or charitable foundations, the chief of which was the wealthy Hospital of St. Leonard (separated from St. Mary's only by the Roman vallum and tower), and this house claimed Athelstan for its founder. Of none of these establishments do more than a few walls here and there remain; but many of their churches (having been parochial) still exist, and several of them present specimens of Norman work-indeed, the tower of the old parochial church of St. Mary, Bishophill, is believed to have been built before the Norman Conquest, with Roman materials, and to have seen the days of Edward the Confessor, when the missionary monks of Evesham (on their tour of visitation to the ancient seats of religion in the Northumbrian province) came to York, which was even then the first city of northern England, leading one poor mule, which carried their books and vestments -humble pioneers of a long line of magnificent and wealthy churchmen. Mr. Davies, in an excellent communication to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, has assisted us to form a pleasing imaginary survey of the picturesque assemblage of architectural objects of beauty and grandeur which must have been beheld in the days of the Plantagenets, when church towers and stately monastic buildings, amid their luxurious gardens, met the eye in every direction, the great minster itself towering above them all. In speaking of the use of Roman materials in existing structures, I should have mentioned that for the unique sculptured arch which was removed from the ruined Dominican Church of St. Nicholas and is now attached to the Church of St. Margaret (a poor and comparatively modern building), an age of sixteen centuries has been claimed, and a pre-eminence in beauty over all the specimens of British-Roman art that have come down to our time: it is supposed to have been originally part of the Roman Temple of the Sun. And, according to tradition, upon

the site of St. Helen's Church, Yorkshire maidens celebrated the rites of Italy, for there the Roman Temple of Diana is said to have stood.

I mention these churches of York only by way of indicating the antiquity of its features; many other ecclesiastical structures in the city are very interesting; and as to the minster itself, a description of that glorious pile alone would of course fill a volume. Of ancient military architecture many examples remain besides the Roman multangular tower already mentioned, and the famous Edwardian walls. There are Micklegate-bar and Monkgate-bar, fine specimens of architecture of the age of Edward III., and the picturesque old circular fortress which rises on the mound that was the keep of the Norman castle of York, and has acquired the name of Clifford's Tower.

Of the domestic architecture of our sturdy forefathers there are still a few specimens, especially the old houses which were formerly the town "inns" (or mansions) of noble Yorkshire families, and which are lighted up in their fading dignity by some rays of history, from their having been associated with the great name of Percy, or Howard, or Clifford, or some other family of renown. And there is, besides, the old manor-house in which parliaments, and the meetings of the sanguinary "Council of the North," under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, were held, and in which King Charles the Martyr resided; and the Hospitium, or guest-house of St. Mary's Abbey, in which the Yorkshire Philosophical Society have appropriately lodged the Roman statues, altars, and other antiquities found in the vicinity. The pavement discovered between the railway station and Micklegate, on the spot where a Roman villa stood, and the pavements from Collingham and Tadcaster, have also been recently laid down here; their coloured tessere are of bold design, but the style and workmanship are rude compared with those of the pavements extant in Italy. The fine and spacious Guild-hall, too, though it does not date from the time of the Plantagenets, reminds a visitor of that scene in the municipal history of York, when Richard II., taking off his own sword, presented it to the then mayor, to be borne before him and his successors, to whom the sovereign thenceforth decreed the dignity of Lord Mayor. Most of the English monarchs have at some time resided in York,

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