href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41387@[email protected]#ARTISTIC_JENKINSISM" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">ARTISTIC JENKINSISM.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHESTER AND THE DEE.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL, CHESTER

The "city of the legions" still bears traces of the Roman dominion, more proud of them than were the spirited Britons in the days when these walls and other Roman buildings meant subjection to a foreign power. The walls, which are nearly perfect, now provide a pleasant walk for the citizens, a surface five or six feet broad, with a coped parapet or iron railing on either side, and trees almost as old as the walls overshadowing some parts of them. The old gates have been destroyed or removed, and three modern archways now pierce the walls; but the memory of the ancient city defences lingers in the names of some of the principal streets—Northgate, Foregate, Bridgegate, Watergate streets, etc. The Dee was approached by two of these gates, one of which opened at the lower end of Bridge street on the old bridge, which still remains, while Watergate street was similarly connected with the river. Here stands the same old tower—Water Tower—which in mediæval times served to defend the gate. A Roman column and base, like that discovered in Bridge street, stand near it among the formal evergreens, and a strange low building, seemingly entire, which distinguishes this opening, is called by antiquaries a hypocaust or Roman warming apparatus. The walls of the tower still exhibit iron staples, showing that ships were anciently moored at this place, but the river has considerably receded since these were used, for even during the civil wars there was a wide space between the tower and the shore. Another of the old towers, the Phœnix, now called King Charles's Tower, is memorable as the spot whence Charles I. watched the defeat of his troops by Cromwell on Rowton Heath or Moor. It is approached by a small stone staircase with a wooden railing, and is only large enough to hold a dozen men. The ruins of St. John's, the old Norman cathedral—the church to which King Edgar, before it had become a bishop's seat, rowed up the river with six Welsh kings as his oarsmen, himself steering the barque—are very imposing, although here and there improvements of questionable taste have been added. The new park laid out around them sets them off to great advantage, and though the date of the architecture of Harold's Chapel disproves the legend attached to it, one is none the less glad to be reminded of the obstinate love and loyalty of Englishmen to the unsuccessful hero of the battle of Hastings. He was said to have fled to Chester, and lived as a hermit in a chapel near this cathedral: as to his widow, her stay in Chester after her husband's defeat and death is an historical fact. Harold shared the same poetical fate as Arthur, Charlemagne and Barbarossa, and for over a century he was believed by the people to be alive and plotting. Higden, the chronicler of St. Werburgh's Abbey (the church which since Henry VIII. has been the cathedral, and itself stood on the site of an older church dedicated in Roman and British times to Saints Peter and Paul), naturally adopted the legend and versified it. In Saxon times, though the city was included in a large diocese, St. Chad, which ruled all the kingdom of Mercia, it was practically independent, and in the possession of various monastic houses. Of these, the greatest was the abbey of St. Werburgh. Its shrine was the goal of pilgrimages, and is said to have been endowed by the daughter of King Alfred. The present building dates from the days of William Rufus, when Hugh d'Avranches—or Lupus, as he was surnamed—earl of Chester, and one of the Conqueror's old companions, became a monk in his newly-endowed abbey, which he peopled with Benedictine