After A While, We Got A Porter To Take The Luggage.

After some hard knocking we roused an innkeeper, and by three o'clock we were all in as good beds as mortals could desire.

At nine o'clock we breakfasted, and at ten my delighted eyes rested on the real, living York Minster; the dream of my youth was realized, and I stood in its majestic presence. I entered; the service had just begun; the organ was playing, they were chanting. You could not tell from whence the music came. It was every where; it enters your soul like a beautiful poetic thought, and you know not what possesses you. Only your whole soul is full of worship, peace, and joy. I could hardly keep from falling on my knees. Look at the fine engravings, and study it all out as well as you can; still you can form no adequate idea of the effect of those endless arches, of the exquisite carving in stone, of the flowers, strange figures, and in short every wild, every grotesque thing that you can or cannot imagine. Well has it been called a great poem in stone, - such grace, such aspiration, such power, such harmony. O, it was worth crossing the Atlantic, that first impression.

After the service, I took a guide and went all over this miracle of beauty and genius, and read the inscriptions and saw the curiosities.

During my second stay in Liverpool, my friend took me to Chester, that wonderful old city, just on the borders of Wales. If you can imagine the front rooms of the second story of a row of houses taken out, and in their place a floor put over the lower story and a ceiling under the upper story, and shops in the back rooms, you will form some idea of Chester. All the streets, nearly, are made in this way. The carts and horses go in the narrow streets between the houses, but foot passengers walk in this curious sort of piazzas, put into the houses instead of being added to them. The most elegant shops are here in these back rooms, and you walk for whole long streets under cover, with the dwellings of the inhabitants over your heads and under your feet. Often the upper story shelves over the third, so that you almost wonder why the house does not tumble over.

A friend, whom I had never seen, did me the honor to invite me to her hospitable mansion in Manchester. It was indeed a great privilege to be allowed to make a part of the family circle, and sit with them by their fireside, and be made to feel at home so far from one's native land; and this I experienced all the time I was in England.

I was prepared for the appearance of Manchester. So I was not astonished at the number of tall chimneys, nor at the quantity of smoke that issued from them. And I could quite enter into the feelings of the friend who told me that nothing was more melancholy than to see a clear atmosphere over the town; the blacker it looked the more prosperity was indicated, and the more cause for rejoicing.

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