Читать книгу The Stranger's Handbook to Chester and Its Environs онлайн

22 страница из 41

Cast your eye to the right, along the hue of the City Walls, and at their north-east angle take a distant view of yon reverend turret, overhanging the Canal. How forcibly does it remind us that—

The days of old, though time has reft

The splendours they once cast,

Yet many a relic still is left

To shadow forth the past!

People call it, in these days, the Phœnix Tower; but two hundred years ago, and even then it was accounted old, the name it usually bore was Newton’s Tower. On its lofty ramparts, in 1645, stood the royal martyr, King Charles, to witness a sanguinary contest not far from the city, which ended in the total defeat of his troops by the parliamentary forces. In that day’s struggle, and in the Siege that followed it, many a Chester hero bit the dust; and the roll-call that evening proclaimed many an infant fatherless, many a wife a widow! But why should we anticipate? We shall soon be close to the very walls of this Tower, and may then soliloquise to our heart’s content on those terrible times.