enclose and protect the city, then called Caerleon, of which her husband, the first Earl of Mercia, was governor. These walls of red sandstone, strengthened by iron bands, stand evidently on the stronger foundation of those built by the Romans, for at intervals, in their circuit, the huge stones so generally seen in the work of these giant architects are visible.

Wood and red sandstone are the materials of old Chester-very picturesque, but crumbling-and replaced now in its new buildings by the brick and mortar of modern times.

The bells of the cathedral sound, and we start on this bright Easter Sunday for her service. Crossing Cow-lane Bridge over the canal, we pass through a narrow stony passage, ending in an archway beneath the old walls, into the cloisters of the cathedral. This passage, called the Kale Yards, was in olden time the kitchen garden of the convent of St. Werburgh, a Saxon princess, who, whatever her power may have been in life, in death was reputed to have performed so many miracles, that Ethelfleda, the Countess of Mercia, carefully enclosed within the city walls the site of her burial place, and raised on it a magnificent convent dedicated to St. Werburgh and St. Oswald. This convent, the germ, as it were, of the present cathedral of Chester, stood on ground already devoted to sacred purposes. Here the Druids had celebrated their sylvan rites, ere the Britons were visited by the Romans; they bringing with them the faith of the Pantheon, expelled the Druids, and built where they had worshipped a temple to Apollo; to this succeeded, as Christianity gained ground in Britain, a monastery. The friars turned out when Ethelfleda opened her "Home for Ladies," and they again retired on the arrival, with William the Conqueror, of some Benedictine monks from Normandy, who restored the monastery, and retained it through many centuries, but were driven out by Henry VIII., offering to him a rich plunder in the revenues and treasures they had accumulated.

St. Werburgh's monastery now became the cathedral church of Chester a massive pile of Norman-Gothic architecture, less beautiful than most of our other English cathedrals, and now much hidden and disfigured within and without by the scaffolding necessary for its work of restoration. The sun shines through a handsome modern-painted window on the crowded congregation, the organ peals, and every one rises, as the dean, with the whiterobed clergy and choristers, enters and walks down the nave. Near me is an assemblage of such gaily-dressed maidens, that, but for their number, I should have fancied they had played the part of bridesmaids at an early wedding. White hats with magenta ribbons, white cashmere cloaks falling over skirts of the same bright colour, appeared to me a costume little adapted to the

charitable institution to which, on inquiry, I found these little girls belonged-" an orphanage for destitute children," founded by Miss Graham, the late bishop's daughter, but now under the management of the Devonport Sisters, who have altered the dress originally worn by the children. The usual cathedral service proceeds; the anthem is the glorious Hallelujah chorus. As the dean walks to read the communion service he is followed by two old bedesmen, who station themselves on either side of the gate without the rails, leaning on their staves, with their heads bent, and so remain until he comes from the table. Before the sermon the Easter hymn is sung, not by the choristers only, but by the congregation, the vergers, who have been busy and bustling to a disturbing degree, now distributing hymn-books, that all may unite on this "our triumphant holy day" in joyful thanksgiving.

After a passing look at the new town-hall, our way after church took us through the abbey gate, where in the olden time at Whitsuntide the monks of Chester commenced the performance of their "Mystery Plays," the waggon on which the representation took place always stopping first at the abbey gate, that" the monks and the churche might have the first sighte, and then the stage was drawn to the High Crosse before the mayor and aldermen." Mounting the walls near the Phoenix Tower, whence Charles I. is said to have witnessed his defeat at the battle of Rowton Moor, we walked round, gaining curious insight into the habits of the people of Chester, as we saw into the windows and looked over the gardens that lay beneath us. On clear days, the views over Cheshire and into Wales are said to be good from the walls, but a very dingy atmosphere beyond the city, though the sun shone bright within it, hid these from us. Passing the picturesque old Water Tower, we reached the spot perhaps in these days the most celebrated in Chester, the Roodee, or race-ground, where, since the days of "Mr. Robert Amerye, ironmonger, and sometime sheriffe of Chester, in 1608," the inhabitants have been amused on or about St. George's Day by the "runninge of horses for silver cuppes." The soft green meadow now bore little trace of the bustle and crowd so soon to be seen upon it. A few donkeys and sheep browsed lazily along the course, and little children played beneath the grand stand.

As we walked on, the Dee ran beneath us, brown and thick, but alive with boats, and among them a kind of floating steam omnibus, very like a large toy Noah's Ark, in which we were told short excursions to places on the river's bank could be made for a very trifling sum. Many gaily-dressed holiday folk were travelling by it then. There is scarcely any part of Chester walls that has not a legend of English history belonging to it. Here St. Augustine threatened the inhabitants with the vengeance of Heaven, on their refusal to

accept him as their bishop. There, opposite Handbridge, was the place of embarkation of King Edgar, who is said to have made eight tributary kings row him along the Dee to the monastery of St. John's, when he visited Chester in the tenth century. Near the site of an old gateway the Queen Margaret, the wife of Henry the Sixth, it is told, stood while she distributed little. silver swans to the loyal gentlemen of Chester who gathered round the standard of their king. Many events in the wars between Charles the First and his parliament have their records on the walls of Chester; and as our walk round them brings us at last to the castle, we seem to find gathered in it memorials of England's wars from the time of the Romans to the present day. Here Agricola built the tower that still stands within the castle-gates. Here the Normans added fortifications to secure themselves from the retributive attacks of the people they had conquered. Here, later, Norman fought against Norman. Hence, still later, issued Henry of Lancaster with the army he had mustered beneath the castle-walls to encounter and defeat Richard the Second, who was soon brought back a prisoner, "riding on a little nagg, not worth twenty franks." Here came Harry Hotspur on his way to his last battle of Shrewsbury. The Puritans often "sought the Lord" in a spirit far from Christian within the walls of Chester Castle, hanging from them the opponents they had captured. And, coming down to still later days, we found in the courtyard two guns taken by the allied armies during the Crimean war; while Waterloo has its memorial in Marochetti's fine statue of Lord Combermere, which stands at the entrance of the castle-gates.

Leaving the walls, we soon reached the old church of St. John, with its high belfry tower standing apart, and the remains of the chapels that were attached to it in earlier times lying in picturesque ivy-covered ruins around. Chester is full of churches and of public-houses. Judging from the morning congregation in the cathedral and that of the afternoon at St. Mary's, the former are well attended, and as during all our rambles we did not meet a single tipsy person, we were led to hope that the latter do not draw so many within them as might have been believed from their number. St. Mary's is a fine old church, and contains some curious monuments in marble; its interior was made gay by the presence of the militia, and by the wreaths of fresh flowers that garlanded its columns and windows on this Easter-day. Passing along Queen-street, our attention was attracted by the unroofed pillars and arches of an unfinished church. On asking what it meant, we were told it was the Roman Catholic chapel, which in the process of building, six years ago, had been nearly destroyed. by a storm of wind.

"Pity it wasn't quite," said our informant; adding, with evident satisfaction, "but they've never found the money to build it up again."

We entered the wooden enclosure now used for service, and were courteously received by a friar in the brown Capuchin dress and sandal, who showed us the artificial flowers and glimmering lamps burning beneath the "stations" that hung on the walls. He told us he was a Dutchman of the order of St. Francis of the Schism. "We are few here in Chester," he said, "but we are in all the world."

But our day is drawing to a close, and we have yet to speak of the most remarkable feature of Chester. An old writer, describing the city, says: "The houses are very fair built, and along the streets are galleries or walking-places they call 'rows,' having shops on both sides, through which a man may walk dry from one end to the other." These rows, which are on a level with the first floor of the houses, have shops above and below; they are roofed, and are at intervals connected by bridges, and ascended by flights of steps. Their construction is believed to have originated with the Romans, who used them as porticoes to their houses. Even on Sunday, when the closed shops deprived them of much of their attraction, the rows were the principal thoroughfares; the streets were given up to carriages and carts, and the people walked along or lounged in picturesque groups within the railings of these curious old galleries.

Our walk must end with Watergate-street, in which but little change has been made for upwards of three hundred years. The old wooden houses, with their balconies, their inscriptions, hieroglyphics, and coats-of-arms, bear the dates carved on them in the early parts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some have nearly the whole front covered with carved work, and retain the small latticed windows and curious division into square compartments of brown and white seen in very old houses. Most of the inscriptions are in Latin, but on one house is written in old English characters:

"God's providence is mine inheritance. 1652."

It is said to have been carved by its then owner in gratitude for the preservation of himself and his family from the plague, which at that time was devastating the city. As we read this sentence of thanksgiving, a beggar, one of many who had appealed to us during our walk, tried to excite our charity by telling us she and the "mawthers" were "clemming" for a dinner. We were thus reminded that ours awaited us, and so returned to our hotel, well pleased with the knowledge we had gained of Chester city in our one day's walk within its walls.

DREAMS, cheerful dreams, are pleasant things, and conversely painful; and so many are of the latter character, the balance is so evenly struck, that it would be better perhaps not to dream at all. We are told that the pleasure or painful nature of a dream depends upon the state of the bodily health, and it is certainly singular that the state of the stomach be what it may, we shall at one time have pleasant dreams, and at another those which are painful. We even feel apprehensive as to what such dreams may lead. When they are pleasant, too, their termination is often abrupt, or so painful when we awake, that we are ready to exclaim with Richard III., "Bind up my wounds; have mercy, Jesu !"

How, or by what means do we dream? This is a puzzle which all the subtlety and dexterity of the supporters of the phrenological system of Gall and Spurzheim cannot reveal, nor the impositions of Homes and such like spiritualists, or "meagrim hunters," who practise so extensively upon human credulity, lay open to demonstration. How the mind acts in sleep is still a greater mystery. We are told that dreams are formed of our waking thoughts, yet it is often the case that none of our waking thoughts can be found in them, no, not even fragments. Yet is the delineation of the impress then formed more vivid than any in the power of fancy or memory to paint when awake. No mental volition can bring them forward so distinct and so strong in impress as a "vision of the night" almost uniformly produces. Nor does there seem to be anything wanting on these occasions even in deep slumber.

There are some people who never dream; to what can this be owing? The number of such, however, is few, and we cannot map the human brain of that peculiar few. The phrenological maps of the human cranium in existence mean nothing. We reflect, and reflect again, but in vain, and are obliged to fall back upon our ignorance. Most assuredly the convexity, or elevation, or latitude of the cranium, if it allow one particular faculty to supersede or to excel another in magnitude, will do nothing towards revealing the origin of those dreams which represent at times every prominent object in nature.