great events may be little things in themselves; and so I could not see how important a part these minute iron-tinted specks – the work of a microscopic fungus were to enact in British history. The old soothsayers professed to read the destinies of the future in very unlikely pages, — in the meteoric appearances of the heavens, and in the stars, - in the flight and chirping of birds, in the entrails of animals, in many other strange characters besides; and in the remoter districts of my own country I have seen a half-sportive superstition employed in deciphering characters quite as unlikely as those of the old augurs, in the burning of a brace of hazel-nuts, in the pulling of a few oaten stalks, in the grounds of a tea-cup,above all, in the Hallowe'en egg, in which, in a different sense from that embodied in the allegory of Cowley,

The curious eye,

Through the firm shell and the thick white may spy

Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their sacred secundine asleep."

But who could have ever thought of divining over the spotted tubers? or who so shrewd as to have seen in the grouping of their iron-shot specks Lord John Russell's renunciation of the fixed duty, the conversion to free-trade principles of Sir Robert Peel and his Conservative ministry, the breaking up into sections of the old Protectionist party, — and, in the remote distance, the abolition in Scotland of the law of entail, and in England the ultimate abandonment, mayhap, of the depressing tenant-at-will system? If one could have read them aright, never did the flight of bird or the embowelment of beast indicate so wonderful a story as these same iron-shot tubers.

4*

CHAPTER II.

Weather still miserably bad; suited to betray the frequent Poverty of English Landscape. - Gloomy Prospects of the Agriculturist. CornLaw League. — York; a true Sacerdotal City. Cathedral; noble Exterior; Interior not less impressive; Congreve's sublime Description. Unpardonable Solecism. - Procession. - Dean Cockburn; Crusade against the Geologists. — Cathedral Service unworthy of the Cathedral. - Walk on the City Ramparts. Flat Fertility of the surrounding Country. — The more interesting Passages in the History of York supplied by the Makers. — Robinson Crusoe. - Jeanie Deans. Trial of Eugene Aram. — Aram's real Character widely different from that drawn by the Novelist.

RAIN, rain! another morning in England, and still no improvement in the weather. The air, if there was any change at all, felt rather more chill and bleak than on the previous evening; and the shower, in its paroxysms, seemed to beat still heavier on the panes. I was in no mood to lay myself up in a dull inn, like Washington Irving's stout gentleman, and so took the train for York, in the hope of getting from under the cloud somewhere on its southern side, ere I at least reached the British Channel. Never surely was the north of England seen more thoroughly in dishabille. The dark woods and thick-set hedgerows looked blue and dim through the haze, like the mimic woodlands of a half-finished drawing in gray chalk; and, instead of cheering, added but to the gloom of the landscape. They seemed to act the part of mere sponges, that first condensed and then retained the moisture,-that became soaked in the shower, and then, when it had passed, continued dispensing their droppings on the rotting sward beneath, until

another shower came. The character of the weather was of a kind suited to betray the frequent poverty of English landscape. When the sky is clear and the sun bright, even the smallest and tamest patches of country have their charms: there is beauty in even a hollow willow pollard fluttering its silvery leaves over its patch of meadow-sedges against the deep blue of the heavens; but in the dull haze and homogeneous light, that was but light and shadow muddled into a neutral tint of gray, one could not now and then avoid remarking that the entire prospect consisted of but one field and two hedge

rows.

As we advanced, appearances did not improve. The wheaten fields exhibited, for their usual golden tint slightly umbered, an ominous tinge of earthy brown; the sullen rivers had risen high over the meadows; and rotting hay-ricks stood up like islands amid the water. At one place in the line the train had to drag its weary length in foam and spray, up to the wheel-axles, through the overflowings of a neighboring canal. The sudden shower came ever and anon beating against the carriage windows, obscuring yet more the gloomy landscape without; and the passengers were fain to shut close every opening, and to draw their great-coats and wrappers tightly around them, as if they had been journeying, not in the month of August, scarcely a fortnight after the close of the dog-days, but at Christmas. I heard among the passengers a few semi-political remarks, suggested by the darkening prospects of the agriculturist. The Anti-Corn-Law League, with all its formidable equipments, had lain for years, as if becalmed in its voyage, a water-logged hulk, that failed to press on towards its port of destination. One good harvest after another had, as sailors say, taken the wind out of its sails; and now here evidently was there a strong gale arising full in its poop. It was palpa

bly on the eve of making great way in its course; and the few political remarks which I heard bore reference to the fact. But they elicited no general sympathy. The scowling heavens, the blackening earth, the swollen rivers, the ever-returning showerblast, with its sharp-ringing patter, were things that had nought of the gayety of political triumph in them; and the more solid English, however favorable to free trade, could not deem it a cause of gratulation that for so many weeks "the sun, and the light, and the stars, had been darkened, and the clouds returned after the rain." The general feeling seemed not inadequately expressed by a staid elderly farmer, with whom I afterwards travelled from York to Manchester. "I am sure,"

he said, looking out into the rain, which was beating at the time with great violence, — "I am sure I wish the League no harm; but Heaven help us and the country, if there is to be no harvest! The League will have a dear triumph, if God destroy the fruits of the earth."

Old sacerdotal York, with its august cathedral, its twentythree churches in which Divine service is still performed, its numerous ecclesiastical ruins besides, monasteries, abbeys, hospitals and chapels, at once struck me as different from anything I had ever seen before. St. Andrews, one of the two ancient archiepiscopal towns of Scotland, may have somewhat resembled it on a small scale in the days of old Cardinal Beaton; but the peculiar character of the Scottish Reformation rendered it impossible that the country should possess any such ecclesiastical city ever after. Modern improvement has here and there introduced more of its commonplace barbarisms into the busier and the genteeler streets than the antiquary would have bargained for; it has been rubbing off the venerable rust, somewhat in the style adopted by the serving-maid, who scoured the old Roman buckler with sand and water till it

shone: but York is essentially an ancient city still. One may still walk round it on the ramparts erected in the times of Edward the First, and tell all their towers, bars, and barbacans; and in threading one's way along antique lanes, flanked by domiciles of mingled oak and old brick-work, that belly over like the sides of ships, and were tenanted in the days of the later Henrys, one stumbles unexpectedly on rectories that have their names recorded in Doomsday Book, and churches that were built before the Conquest. My first walk through the city terminated, as a matter of course, at the cathedral, so famous for its architectural magnificence and grandeur. It is a noble pile, one of the sublimest things wrought by human hands which the island contains. As it rose gray and tall before me in the thickening twilight,- for another day had passed, and another evening was falling, I was conscious of a more awe-struck and expansive feeling than any mere work of art had ever awakened in me before. The impression more resembled what I have sometimes experienced on some solitary ocean shore, o'erhung by dizzy precipices, and lashed high by the foaming surf; or beneath the craggy brow of some vast mountain, that overlooks, amid the mute sublimities of nature, some far-spread uninhabited wilderness of forest and moor. realized better than ever before the justice of the eulogium of Thomson on the art of the architect, and recognized it as in reality

"The art where most magnificent appears

The little builder man.'

It was too late to gain admission to the edifice, and far too late to witness the daily service; and I was desirous to see not only the stately temple itself, but the worship performed in it. I spent, however, an hour in wandering round it,-in marking the effect on buttress and pinnacle, turret and arch, of the still