2l6 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



choice of the wall, and one sees posted notices of the 

 city authorities, offering a reward for any one detected 

 in injuring it. It has stood now some seven or eight 

 centuries, and from appearances is good for one or two 

 more. There are several towers on the wall, from one 



y 



of which some English, king, over two hundred years 

 ago, witnessed the defeat of his army on Rowton Moor. 

 But when I was there, though the sun was shining, the 

 atmosphere was so loaded with smoke that I could not 

 catch even a glimpse of the moor where the battle 

 took place. There is a gateway through the wall on 

 each of the four sides, and this slender and beautiful 

 but blackened and worn span, as if to afford a transit 

 from the chamber windows on one side of the street to 

 those of the other, is the first glimpse the traveller gets 

 of the wall. The gates beneath the arches have en- 

 tirely disappeared. The ancient and carved oak fronts 

 of the buildings on the main street, and the inclosed 

 sidewalk that ran through the second stories of the 

 shops and stores, were not less strange and novel to 

 me. The sidewalk was like a gentle upheaval in its 

 swervings and undulations, or like a walk through the 

 woods, the oaken posts and braces on the outside an- 

 swering for the trees, and the prospect ahead for the 

 vista. 



The ride along the coast of Wales was crowded with 

 novelty and interest — the sea on one side and the 

 mountains on the other — the latter bleak and heathery 

 in the foreground, but cloud-capped and snow-white in 



