— 414 — 



they style them, and that though the wants of com- 

 merce or the utiletarianisni of the age, have been 

 attended to, he would indeed be a bold man, who would 

 dare suggest the removal of those sacred walls and grim 

 Gates of York, which each year attract to the city thou- 

 sand and thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe 

 and America. 



I subjoin here a graphic sketch of York : 

 " Not weak, however, are the visible and tangible 

 proofs of Eoman occupation, for though there is no 

 great gate still standing as at Lincoln, there is probably 

 no English city so full of fragments of wall, of pave- 

 ments, and of monuments to the invaders. About 

 seventy acres of the centre of the present city, enclosing 

 a rectangle of about 550, by 650 yards, formed no* 

 doubt the Eoman camp, in the middle of which, again 

 stood the Prsetorium, afterwards the imperial palace, 

 the site of which is near the present Christ Church. Gf 

 their monuments now above ground the " multangular 

 tower " near St. Leonard's Hospital, which is a ten- 

 sided building forming an angle of the Eoman wall, is 

 far the most interesting, especially as it still bears on 

 its inside some roughly scratched legionary inscrip- 

 tions. In the hospitium of the abbey church, too, there 

 are a fine pavement representing the seasons and various 

 altars. The long Saxon occupation which followed was,. 

 as is well known, sadly interrupted by the Danes. It 

 was near here that Eagnar Lodbrok was so impoliti- 

 cally cast into a pit full of snakes, an act which was 

 bitterly revenged. In York, too, Siward, sick to death 

 and feeling his strength begin to pass away from him, 

 determined to die in harness, and sat up to do so clothed 

 in armour and with a spear erect in his failing hand.. 

 York was in fact, at one time almost wholly populated 

 by the Danes, and plenty of proof of their occupation 

 may be found in the numerous " thorpes " in and. 

 about the city. 



