and formerly they took up their abode in the monastery of the Friars Minors, or some other extensive and princely monastic house. The celebration at York of the festivities on the marriage of the Scotish king with Margaret, daughter of Henry III.; the reception of another princess-Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. -on her bridal journey to Scotland; and the visit of that monarch to York in the first year of his reign, when a pair of organs and a musician were hired, at the expense of twelvepence, to grace the pageant exhibited on the king's entry at Micklegatebar, are amongst its many regal memories. But I am not writing a guide-book, nor attempting to indicate even the most remarkable of the antiquities of York. If it were within the scope of this article, I might pass from the silent stones of the old metropolitan city to the living wonders of agriculture that brought such a confluence of visitors on this occasion, and might describe some of the animals collected on the Yorkshire Agricultural Society's show-ground: the prize Herefords; the leviathan short-horns, placid and ponderous; the cylindrical pigs, and woolly South-downs; the fine symmetrical horses, worthy the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire; the woolly Cotteswold and Leicester sheep; and the various agricultural productions of the great grazing district of the West Riding. In the umbrageous gardens of the Museum the vigilant committee had brought together more intellectual food, and many relics of what Lord Derby might call a pre-scientific age-medals of a pre-historic world. There were organic fossils from the protozoic limestones of Wenlock and Dudley on the one hand, and from the tertiary beds of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight upon the other; there were beautiful specimens of that extraordinary zoophyte, the Lily Encrinite, from the mountain limestone near Richmond, the stem of one of which, composed of thin cylindrical joints or rings, tapers to the root; there were sponges from the Flamborough chalk, and a magnificent series of agates from Scarborough. And viewing these relics, the thoughts reverted to pre-Adamite days, and looking over the now cultivated vale of York, bordered by the chalk-wolds, and stretching to the Cleveland hills, I thought of the upraising of those older heights, of the excavation of Yorkshire's romantic dales, and the clothing of its once submarine lands with verdure; of the elephants and other gigantic carnivora, whose remains are inclosed in the caves they inhabited by a drift deposit of the boulder-clay period—animals which ranged the forests of Yorkshire long before the Romans established a colony here—long, indeed, before even the aboriginal Britons inhabited the country. In a distant geological age, the sea as yet covered all but the western area of Yorkshire; in other words, it was only in the mountainous district of the county that any land had risen. Upon the submarine bed, which then stretched eastward from the foot of the Penine hills, the lias, with all its saurians and ammonites, was in that age beginning to be deposited. The London basin is supposed to have been then a great estuary; and isolated heights (like the present Isle of Sheppey at the mouth of the Thames) seem to have been spice islands, inhabited by animals and plants now found only in the tropics. A petrified ichthyosaurus—a combination of fish and alligator, a monster which had the body of a whale, the head of a saurian reptile, and the paddle of a fish-was shown from the lias of Whitby-an impressive relic of that pre-Adamite world in which a lizard larger than the elephant ranged the woods and plains of Kent, and a dragon as strange as romancer ever feigned flew in the air. But it was pleasant to turn from these formidable petrifactions of geological antiquity to the fair forms that were moving in the warm sunshine on the fragrant lawn, or inspecting the human and historical antiquities displayed in the Museum, which embraced all kinds of objects. There were necklaces that had adorned English beauties in the Stuart reigns; signets that were used by tawny potentates of India; rude stone weapons of ancient Britons, and elaborate ornaments of Chinese ladies; manuscripts brought from the chapter library (which is kept, by the way, in the exquisite chapel of St. Stephen, the only remaining structure of the archbishop's palace); and the inkstand presented by Garrick to Kemble, and carved from the mulberry-tree which Shakspeare planted. And so, rejoicing that the days of ichthyosauri, Brigantes, Romans, and medieval conquerors had passed away, but wishing that some of the glow and fervour of the monastic times could again fill the vast cathedral, I bade farewell to York. A BORDER CHIEFTAIN'S TOWER. ["New Monthly Magazine," November, 1856.] TOURISTS in search of the picturesque no longer think only of the Rhine and of the castles that crumble on its vine-clad hills; they have learned that beauty and grandeur may be found in the natural scenery of our native land, and that we can find places of great historic interest within a day's journey from London. The number of people who annually migrate to the heather hills, the gleaming lakes and mountain heights of Cumberland, show that the attractions of that part of England are well appreciated; and persons who seek picturesque scenery and historic memories will find few places so well worthy of a visit as Naworth Castle-the most remarkable Border stronghold in that county. Near the line of the ancient Roman wall (which, starting from near the mouth of the Tyne and ending on the Solway, traversed that part of the island almost from sea to sea), that Border fortress stands secluded amongst some of the fairest scenery of rocky Cumberland, yet easily accessible by road or railway from Carlisle. It is a characteristic monument of the olden time, and is, moreover, associated with the memory of one of the most remarkable worthies of English history, for Naworth Castle was once the stronghold of Lord William Howard, "the Civiliser of the English Borders," the "Belted Will" whose name has been made a household word by Scott. It is now the property of his lineal descendant the Earl of Carlisle, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who inherits with the great possessions of his distinguished ancestor his amiable qualities and his literary tastes. The aspect of the castle and everything about it is so antique, that at Naworth we still seem to be in the seventeenth century, and things and people that have passed into history seem to have here a local habitation. Naworth Castle was extensively injured (in fact, in some parts nearly destroyed) by fire in 1844, but its noble owner has so well preserved its original character in his restorations, That Naworth stands, still rugged as of old, And the bland influence of a Howard's sway. Accordingly, this picturesque old stronghold even now looks as if it had been forgotten amid the changes that have transformed other buildings, and as if one might expect to find its mail-clad warders spell-bound in its court-yard or gallery, and ready, at the sound of the bugle-horn, to pace the keep again, or issue with their chieftain in armed array. 66 And an air of antiquity seems to pervade everything around it. The aspect of the castle is quite in keeping with its situation. Its grey cliffs of lonely stone" rise on the edge of a deep ravine, ever filled with the low wild music of the streamlet that gushes over its rocky bed below. The trees in the park and chase are wide-spreading and umbrageous, if not old and stately. You stand upon the footsteps of the Romans, whose celebrated wall and military road remain adjacent, and whose paved causeway traverses a neighbouring waste, and you are near the ruined dwellings of barons and of monks. On the green meadows in the distance is the old abbey church of Lanercost; and the lonely glens and thickets look as if they were still the haunt of the wild boar and the red deer, as in the days of Norman rule. The interior of the castle preserved all its antique features before the lamentable fire scattered the ancient furniture of the warden's apartments (which were in that portion of the building still called "Lord William's Tower "), and destroyed the characteristic old hall and chapel. The warden's chambers were reached by a narrow winding stair, and guarded by doors strengthened with iron. They consist of his library (for he was a scholar as well as a soldier, and could employ the pen as effectively as the sword), of his oratory, and his bed chamber; and these rooms, with their tapestried walls, the very furniture and weapons he used, the books he read, and the altar at which he knelt, were pre served so entirely in their original state, that (as Sir Walter Scott remarked) they carried you back to the hour when the warden in person might be heard ascending his turret-stair, and almost led you to expect his arrival. Not, however, that the castle-or rather, the oldest of those portions which escaped the fire-can boast of greater age than the middle of the fourteenth century. Lord William Howard, who lived in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, died in 1640, and the castle was built by Ralph de Dacre about three centuries before. Lord William's repairs and alterations were very extensive, and the architecture of the chief part of the quadrangle, or inner court of the castle, is not older than his time, or, to speak more correctly, dates from the years between 1605 and 1620, and it is in the style of his period that the work has been restored since the fire. From the time of the Norman kings, Naworth and all the neighbouring territory belonged to the lords of Gilsland-a martial race of barons and crusaders-of the ancient historic families of De Vaux, and De Multon and Dacre; but no towers were reared amongst these rocky dells until the year 1335, when the Ralph de Dacre already mentioned, the inheritor of their great possessions, obtained the king's licence to fortify and castellate his mansion there. He built his castle in quadrangular form, inclosing a large court-yard marked by all the stern yet picturesque features of the Edwardian fortress; and the walls being built on the edge of steep declivities on all sides but the south side, he there raised massive battlemented towers, so that the whole building seemed to bear the impress of the rude chivalry of the Border five centuries ago. And thus it was that in those uncomfortable days, When English lords and Scotish chiefs were foes, The inhabitants of the Northern "Marches" (as they were called) were in those times engaged in almost continual warfare against the Scots and the Moss Troopers; the country was |