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

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So much then for the Phœnix Tower, and its historical associations. We must now move on to the westward, taking note on our way of Upton Church and spire, lying just upon the northern confines of the city.

Below us stretches away the Canal, which, here usurping the place of the ancient fosse, skirts the entire city, within the Walls, from east to west. Bidding a friendly adieu to the Dean’s Field, that beautiful mead on our left, we approach by a slight incline the North Gate of the city. Look now over the right-hand parapet upon the yawning gulf below, and reflect that, while yon arch was built by an architect of our own time, that course of stones beneath us—the dark ones between the ivy and the abutment—was laid by a Roman mason, when Rome herself was mistress of the world.

Ascending two or three steps, we find ourselves on the top of the North Gate, which here, with its neat elliptical arch, divides Upper from Lower North Gate Street. That new-looking red-brick building beneath us is the Blue-Coat Hospital, a charity school, under the same roof with the ancient Hospital of St. John,—of both which institutions more anon.