List of Illustrations
["He stepped forward with a smile." For Percival. Page 420.]
[The Dee Above Bala.]
[Caer-gai.]
[Bala.]
[Remains Of Valle Crucis Abbey.]
[Owen Glendower's Prison.]
[The Parliament House, Dolgelly.]
[In The Vale Of Llangollen.]
[Llangollen.]
[Chester, From The Aldford Road.]
[Coracles.]
[Chester Cathedral And City Wall.]
[Overton Church.]
[Roman Sepulchre At Taksebt.]
[The Djurjura Range.]
[Road Across The Djurjura At Mount Tirourda.]
[The Peak Of Tirourda.]
[Djema-sahridj.]
[A Dish-factory.]
[The Boudoir And Kitchen.]
[Repose.]
Chester And The Dee.
Two Papers.—I.
The history of Chester is that of a key. It was the last city that gave up Harold's unlucky cause and surrendered to William the Conqueror, and the last that fell in the no less unlucky cause of the Stuart king against the Parliamentarians. In much earlier times it was held by the famous Twentieth Legion, the Valens Victrix, as the key of the Roman dominion in the north-west of Britain, and at present it has peculiarities of position, as well as of architecture, which make it unique in England and a lodestone to Americans. Curiously planted on the border of the newest and most bustling manufacturing district in England, close to the coalfields of North Wales, the mines of Lancashire, the quays of its sea-rival Liverpool and the mills of grimy, wealthy Manchester, it still exercises, besides its artistic and historic supremacy, a bonâ fide ecclesiastical sway over most of these new places. It is the first ancient city accessible to American travellers, many of whom have given practical tokens of their affectionate remembrance of it by largely subscribing to the fund for the restoration of the cathedral, a work that has already cost some eighty thousand pounds.
