the Norman crypt, with all its dim associations, was much abandoned to the steam-boilers which furnish the inspiration, or at least, the power, of the great organ. Though the verger, a man of up-to-date intelligence, was proud of those boilers and their bulk, we complained of them to each other, with the eager grudge of travellers; and I suppose we would rather have had their room given to monuments of Bishop Gauden, who wrote Charles I.'s Eikon Basilike, or of Mrs. Digby by the ever-divine Chantrey, or masterpieces of Roubillac, or effigies of King John and Prince Arthur, or tablets to the wife of Isaac Walton, with epitaphs by the angler himself, such as Baedeker and the other guide-bookers say the cathedral overhead abounds in. We learned too late for emotion that Henry II. and his queen were crowned in the cathedral, and that the poor, bad John was buried there at his own request. "The organ is decorated in arabesque and has five manuals and sixty-two stops," yet we thought it might have got on with fewer boilers in the crypt. Not that we had time or thought for full pleasure in the rest of the cathedral. I remember indeed the beautiful roof of one long unbroken level; but what remains to me of the exquisite "Perp. Cloisters, entered from the S. aisle of the nave"? I will own to my shame that we failed even to see the marriage contract of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, in the diocesan registrar's office, just within the cathedral gateway. Did we so much know that it existed there? Who can say? We saw quite as little that portion of the skin of the Dane who was flayed alive for looting the cathedral, and is now represented by a remnant of his cuticle in the chapter-house.

My prevalent impression of the Worcester Cathedral is not so much one of beauty as one of interest, full,

various, and important interest. Of course in our one poor afternoon we could not give the wonderful place more than an hour. We had for one thing to go and do some shopping, and the shops in Worcester are very fairly good. Then we tried for tea, but there seemed to be men drinking beer in the place; and though the proprietor hospitably drove them out, in honor of the lady of our party, yet we thought we would not have tea there, or indeed anywhere. We went rather for a rainy moment to a pretty public garden beside the Severn, where from a waterproof spread upon a stone seat we watched the flow of the river. It seemed a very damp river, but it must be remembered the weather was wet. For the rest, Worcester proved a city of trams, passing through rather narrow streets of tall modern houses, intersected by lanes of lesser and older houses, much more attractive. It was also a centre of torrential downpours, with refuges in doorways where one of us could wait while the other umbrellaed a wild way about in search of a personable public-house, and an eventual chop. Found, the public-house turned out brand-new, like a hotel in an American railroad centre, where in an upper chamber, dryer and warmer than the English wont, travelling-men sat eating, and the strangers were asked by a kind, plain girl if they would have tea with their chop. Did English people, then, of the lower middle non-conformist class, have tea with their meat? It seemed probable, and in compliance we reverted to the American custom of fifty years ago. If the truth must be told it was not very good, personal tea, but was of the quick-lunch general brew which one drinks scalding hot from steaming nickel-plated cylinders in our country-stations, with the conductor calling “All aboard!" at the door.

It is a shame to be noting these silly exceptions to the grand and beautiful life which must abound in Worcester, if one only had the key to it. There looked charming houses here and there in the quiet streets and places, but the present must keep itself locked against the average touristry to which the past is open. Afterwards we visited the famous city again and again in history, where the reader will find our welcome awaiting him, from Peter de Montford, who pillaged the town in 1263, and Owen Glendower in 1401; from Henry VII. who beheaded there after the battle of Bosworth Field many citizens holding for hunchback Richard; from Queen Elizabeth who came in 1574 and was received at the White Ladies; from Prince Rupert who captured it and Essex who recaptured and plundered it and spoiled the cathedral; and from the two wicked Kings Charles, father and son, who each deserved to lose the battle each lost at Worcester. If the reader comes and goes by Sidbury Gate, he may easily make his entrance and exit by that approach, where the first Charles's friends upset the wagon-load of hay which kept his pursuers from overtaking and taking him in his flight from the battle-field above the city. The storied, or the fabled, hay is always there, if you do not know the place.

The August day we left Malvern, and stayed for a drive through Hereford on our way to Shrewsbury, was bright and hot, and Hereford was responsively sultry and dusty. Except for its beautiful cathedral, Hereford is not apparently interesting, though it may really be interesting. It certainly is historically interesting; and if one likes to find one's self in a place which was considerable in 584, and sent a bishop to the synod of St. Augustine seventeen years later, there is Hereford for the choosing. Otherwise it looks a dull, slovenly large market-town

which has not been swept since the last market-day. It has, indeed, the merit of a fine old Tudor house between three intersecting streets and now devoted to a banking business, and I will not pretend that I did not enjoy, quite as much as I enjoyed the cathedral, the old almshouse which we visited somewhere on the length of a mighty long street. A longer, dustier, flatter and hotter street I have not known outside of Ferrara, where all the streets are like that. It must have been in default of other attractions that we were so strenuous about seeing the Coningsby Hospital for old soldiers and servants, but at any rate I am now glad we went. For one thing we should not have known what else to do till our train left for Shrewsbury, and for another it was really very nice to learn what old soldiership or old butlership could come to late in life in that England of snug retreats for so many sorts of superannuation. The kindly inmate who showed me about the place was hurrying himself into a red coat when we stopped at the outer door, and as he proved an old servant and not an old soldier, I thought he might have worn something of a cooler color, say Kendall-green, on such a day. But there was no other fault in him, and if I had been the nobleman who appointed him to that disoccupation after a life-long menial employment, I might well have thought twice before choosing some other domestic of my train. He led me about the thirsty garden, where the vegetables panted among their droughty flowerborders, and had me view not only the Norman archway of the old commandery of the Knights Templars, now spanning a space of pot herbs, but the ruins of the Black Friars' priory drooping in the heat. Something incongruous in it all tormented the spirit, but how to have it otherwise probably the spirit could not have

said. It was better in the cloistered approaches to the pensioners' quarters, cool and dim under the low ceiling, and I shall always be sorry that I pretended a hurry, and did not view the rooms of my guide. I thought I could do that, any time, in the insensate superstition of the postponing traveller, and now, how far I am from Hereford, recording these vain regrets in the top of a towering New York hotel, overlooking the Hudson!

Or is it rather the Wye? The Wye runs, or slowly, slowly creeps through Hereford, under a most beautiful bridge, which I do not know but you cross in going to the station. I had, or I ought to have had, long thoughts in that dreamy old town, where I would now so willingly pass all the rest of my worst enemy's life; for it was the market-town of my ancestors, and thither, I dare say, my Welsh-flannel manufacturing great-grandfather sent his goods, as to a bustling metropolis where they would bring the largest price. But at this distance of time, who knows? I hope at least they went by the river Wye in barges laden at his little Breconshire town, and floated either up or down the stream; I do not know which way the Wye runs from The Hay, and in this sort of purely literary reverie it does not matter. What really matters is to get these Welsh flannels into the hands of some mercer in Hereford, and then leave them and go again to the cathedral, which is so beautiful, and so full of bishops, now no longer living. Your foot knocks against their monuments at every step; but the great glory of the cathedral is in its mighty tower, massing itself to heaven from the midst, and looking best, I fancy, from the outside of the church. Only, there, when you have left your fly in the shade of the great chestnuts (I hope they are chestnuts), you will have to run across the blazing pavement if you wish to