the whole scope of vale betwixt this proud metropolis and the elevation from which we viewed it, where now was a token of the ancient empire of the flood? where the morass, with its oft-intermingled tufts of sedge and reeds, the habitations of the lonely water-fowl, whose shrill cries alone gave note that the wide waste was tenanted by things of life? These all, like the forest glooms of yonder shore, had vanished; and in their place a suburb, itself a city in extent, stretched to within a brief mile of the spot we gazed from: while all the rest was garden, pasture, seats smiling from their beauteous grounds, and new white towers to modern Christian temples, rising on every side to emulate the pure style of the Athenian fanes of old. Such were the contrasts we contemplated, as created by the lapse of more than twice ten centuries over the scene from the Hill of Nun-head. pleasure in the contemplation would have been indeed complete, had it but been possible to conjure up an Ancient Britain, and enjoy the inexpressible astonishment that would. have possessed him at the prospect he beheld beside us.

Our

YORK.

Every city, and town of any importance, has a character peculiar to itself: the sort of character, we mean, which possesses the mind after having been once acquainted with it, and which never fails to recur to the imagination as often as it is again presented either to the eye or the mental view. The metaphysician's term, association of ideas, will explain this. The main features in the appearance of a place that has once strongly arrested our attention, connecting themselves with such historical recollections as we may have gleaned from books concerning it, or with such facts as our curiosity may have elicited upon the spot, produce this character; which naturally affects us in the degree that we are ourselves imaginative, and according to the extent of our previous enquiries.

Under what character, thus considered, does the northern metropolis of England, (as it might not unaptly be called), the ancient city of YORK, appear before us. Though a place of considerable inland trade, that character is not commercial; for we at once perceive its shipping

and general trading concerns, to be wanting in the very distinctive importance of foreign and export relations. Though a walled city, entered by frowning gates, and though dignified by the presence of a Castle, the associations it touches within us are not military: for the walls have been long made subservient to mere municipal convenience, or the pleasures of the promenade; and the Castle interests not, from external appearance, either as a specimen of modern fortification, or from its remnants of the feudal fortress, having been entirely re-constructed in the last century, in the very superb of styles admissible by its present purpose, that of a county prison. Indeed, York, in our day, with its magnificent gaol, and county-hall; its grand and elegant assembly-rooms; its theatre, racecourse, assizes, fairs, and all their attendant bustle and gaiety; is the mere county-town upon an extended scale-with the exception of a single object, the Cathedral, or, as it is more popularly called, the Minster.

This, this is the grand feature of York, in whose observation we learn to forget what the city is, and revolve in our minds the ancient days, in which so sublime and vast a pile arose from its foundations, to exalt our reverence for that pure faith to whose service it is at length dedicated, and connect religion with the place