grotesque brass head with staring hollow eyes and a ring in its mouth, and it is said that in the olden time, whenever a criminal fleeing from justice could seize upon this ring he was safe. The floor beneath the western tower was sanctuary ground. This is the account given in a work on the antiquities of the church. "The culprit upon knocking at the ring affixed to the north door was admitted without delay, and after confessing his crime, with every minute circumstance connected with it, the whole of which was committed to writing in the presence of witnesses, a bell on the Galilee tower ringing all the while to give notice to the town that some one had taken refuge in the church, there was put upon him a black gown with a yellow cross upon its left shoulder, as the badge of St. Cuthbert, whose girth or peace he had claimed. When thirty-seven days had elapsed, if no pardon could be obtained, the malefactor, after certain ceremonies before the shrine, solemnly abjured his native land forever, and was straightway, by the agency of the intervening parish constables, conveyed to the coast, bearing in his hand a white wooden cross, and was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship which sailed after his arrival." There was a time when rough free England was absolutely ruled by the Church. The Church's temporal as well as spiritual power was above that of king or civil judge, even as claimed in the bull of Pope Urban; and this lasted till Henry VIII. demolished it, and proclaimed himself head of the English Church, the one being about as just a claim as the other.

The Bishopric of Durham is still worth something. The recent Bishop is reported to have left a property of $1,000,000.

Durham Castle, now turned into a peaceful theological seminary, contains nothing remarkable.

Yorkshire is the Empire State of England. In size, agricultural richness, manufactures, population, noble estates, rural beauty, and historical antiquities, it is the queen of English counties. It is more than six hundred square miles larger than Lincolnshire and Devonshire combined, which are the next largest counties. One section of it alone, West Riding, contains about a million and a half of people, one twelfth of the population of England. Yorkshiremen are tall and well-fed. They love horses, drive keen bargains, and are more like "Sam Slick's" Yankees, even in their dialect, than these are to their originals. If the ample kitchen fire-place and the old hearty English manners in hall and cottage remain anywhere unchanged in this "fast" age, they may be found in Yorkshire.

From Durham to York it is sixty-seven miles. The number of gentlemen's residences and noblemen's parks in this part of England is incredible. One naturally asks where is there any land to be obtained by smaller proprietors and farmers? One cannot wonder that the word "locate," as "to locate a lot of land," should be considered an Americanism, there being no such unappropriated bit of earth left in England. But the wealth of such great landowners flows over their land, and

makes it indescribably green, smooth, and beautiful. How different now the scene from that described by an old historian, giving an account of the effects of William the Conqueror's rage against the rebellious, or rather, as was really the case, patriotic Saxons. "He wasted the land between York and Durham, so that for three score miles there was left in manner no habitation for the people, by reason whereof it laid waste and desert for nine or ten yeares. The goodlie cities, with the towers and steeples set up on a statelie height, and reaching as it were into the air; the beautiful fields and pastures watered with the course of sweet and pleasant rivers; if a stranger should then have beheld, and also knowne what they were before, he would have lamented." No wonder the stern warrior gasped out on his death-bed: "Laden with many and grievous sins, O Christ, I tremble; and being ready to be taken by Thy will into the terrible presence of God, I am ignorant what I should do, for I have been brought up in feats of arms even from a child. I am greatly polluted with the effect of much blood. A royal diadem that never any of my predecessors did bear I have gotten; and although manly greediness on my triumph doth rejoice, yet inwardly a careful fear pricketh and biteth me when I consider that in all these cruel rashness hath raged."

York, where one Roman Emperor was born and another buried, has sunk from an imperial city next to London, to a place of third or fourth rate impor

tance. It mixes drugs and blows glass bubbles where it once ruled a kingdom. On its gates the great "king-maker's " head was set, crowned with a paper cap by the fierce Queen Margaret. But the youngest reader need not be told that York Minster is the grandest building in Great Britain, and among the finest in the world. From the top of its central tower one can see thirty miles. Its west front is a most splendid instance of the Decorated style, and as "La Sainte Chapelle " is the "rose" of France, so its little chapter-house is the

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rose " of England. Its seven great windows, and especially what are called "The Five Sisters of York" with painted glass of the 13th century, glow as if studded with gems. Charlotte Brontë often looked on these jewelled windows, and walked under these arches, and heard this great organ.

From York I went to the famous English "Spaw," consisting of two villages about a mile apart, called "High" and "Low Harrowgate." They are situated in the middle of the county, on the highest table-land in England, and are resorted to by dyspeptics and artists. Harrowgate is the "Avon Springs" of England. The sulphurous waters are of considerable strength and efficacy, and these combined with the pure air often effect cures in cases well-nigh desperate. I stopped at the "Granby Hotel" in High Harrowgate, termed in the guide-book" the truly aristocratic hotel of the Spa." It stands on the edge of a broad breezy common, over which young ladies in flats are con

tinually walking or impelling reluctant donkeys. Old ladies in satins, and ancient gentlemen with the florid manners and costume of the era of George IV., play everlasting games of whist in the crimson-curtained parlor.

The walk between the two villages is through quiet fields, with now and then an old-fashioned 'stile." In the vicinity of Harrowgate are some of the most picturesque ruins in England, and around it like a rim stretch the Craven and Hambleton Hills. But the coal-colored skies were gloomy and showery, though in a scientific book it was stated that "the amount of precipitation is less than that of the neighborhood." The old English word for "glory" was "clerenesse," and we wonder not that the clear shining of the sun in this region of perpetual mist should be thought glorious.

While at Harrowgate I made an excursion to "Fountains Abbey," fourteen miles distant by the Ripon road. How one speeds along over the smooth turnpikes in a stiff two-wheeled English wagon! We hardly yet know the luxury of such riding in America, excepting on a few of our best roads out of the large cities. Twenty or thirty miles are something of a distance to drive, but it is reeled off so easily, that neither the driver nor the horses seem to think any thing of it. They are fast drivers in England because both the

horses and roads are

admirable. At Ripon I strolled into the old church, and saw the lugubrious sight of the charnel-house