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At this point we will turn away from the street, and, ascending the steps on the north-east side, will amuse ourselves in the next chapter with a quiet Walk Round the Walls of Chester.

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The Walls of Chester, their builders and their history.—The Cathedral.—The Phœnix Tower, and the Walls during the Siege.—Beeston Castle.—The North Gate.—Training College.—Morgan’s Mount and Pemberton’s Parlour.—The Water Tower.—Infirmary and Gaol.—Linen Hall.—The Watergate.

A walk round the Walls of Chester! Now, then, for a choice tête-à-tête with the past! Away with the commonplace nineteenth century! Away with the mammon-loving world of to-day! The path we are now treading, high above the busy haunts of men, has a traditionary halo and interest peculiarly its own.

With the rapidity of thought, our imagination wanders some eighteen hundred years backwards on the stream of time, to the days when Marius, King of the Britons, to defend his royal city from the incursions of his enemies, built up a fortified wall around Chester. The Britons, however, were no masons; and their rude defences availed them little when opposed to the resistless career of Rome. Surrendered to its new masters, the Romans, Chester speedily gave unmistakeable evidence of the change. The mud-walls, or earthworks of the conquered, vanished before the imperial masonry of the conquerors; and the Walls of Chester, built as only Roman hands could build them, rose majestically in their place, clasping the city in an embrace of stone, defiant alike of time and of the foe.