Although the present city looks, in parts, more typically mediæval than modern, York to-day forms a very great contrast with the fifteenth-century city. We are separated from the fifteenth century by the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Tudor England, by the Civil War and the Restoration, by the "age of prose and reason," the keen-minded and rough-mannered eighteenth century, by the Industrial Revolution, and by that second Renaissance, the Victorian Age, during which the amenities of daily life were revolutionised. Radical changes are to be seen, for example, in the style of architecture, the mode of transmission of news, the methods of transport, the form of municipal government, the maintenance of the public peace, and in social relationships, more particularly with regard to industry and commerce and the parts played by employer and employed. The number of inhabitants to-day is about six times that of the mediæval city. The contrast, which is so great in most ways as to be quite obvious, is an interesting and profitable study, but it might have been founded on more precise data, for, great as is the amount of valuable material that York can supply concerning its history, investigation shows how much greater that amount would have been had the city and its rulers during the last century or two realised the value of the accumulated original historical riches that it contained.
Whereas the moderns obliterated practically all they came against, fortunately the earlier people were content to make no change beyond what was immediately necessary. Hence the survival of material most valuable to the historian and archæologist. York, as it is to-day, is a city marvellously rich in survivals of past ages. It is also, as a result especially of the nineteenth century, a city of destruction. While we may regret but not repine at the disappearance of much of interest and value as the result of progress, yet wanton, ruthless destruction, such as has taken place within the last century, deserves the sternest denunciation. In spite of its being, in consequence, a "city of destruction," York is a store-house of original material for the history of England. Its records are in earth, stone, brick, wood, plaster, bone, and coin-metal; on parchment, paper, and glass; above the ground and below it—everywhere and in every form. This wealth of historical material, connected with practically every period of our national history, is a priceless possession and one that is not yet exhausted.