city of York, did Jeanie Deans rest her for a day, on her London journey, with her hospitable countrywoman, Mrs. Bickerton of the Seven Stars; and it was in the country beyond, down in the West Riding, that Gurth and Wamba held high colloquy together, among the glades of the old oak forest; and that Cedric the Saxon entertained, in his low-browed hall of Rotherwood, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Prior Aymer of Jorvaulx.

I visited the old castle, now a prison, and the town museum, and found the geological department of the latter at once very extensive and exquisitely arranged; but the fact, announced in the catalogue, that it had been laid out under the eye of Phillips, while it left me much to admire in the order exhibited, removed at least all cause of wonder. I concluded the day— the first very agreeable one I had spent in England-by a stroll along the banks of the Ouse, through a colonnade of magnificent beeches. The sun was hastening to its setting, and the red light fell, with picturesque effect, on the white sails of a handsome brig, that came speeding up the river, through double rows of tall trees, before a light wind from the east. On my return to my lodging-house, through one of the obscure lanes of the city, I picked up, at a book-stall, what I deemed no small curiosity-the original "Trial of Eugene Aram," well known in English literature as the hero of one of Bulwer's most popular novels, and one of Hood's most finished poems, and for as wonderful a thing as either, his own remarkable defence. I had never before seen so full an account of the evidence on which he was condemned, nor of the closing scene in his singular history; nor was I aware there existed such competent data for forming an adequate estimate of his character, which, by the way, seems to have been not at all the character drawn by Bulwer. Knaresborough, the scene of Aram's crime, may be seen from the battlements of York Minster. In York Castle he was imprisoned, and wrote his

Defence and his Autobiography; at York Assizes he was tried and convicted; and on York gallows he was hung. The city

is as intimately associated with the closing scenes in his history, as with the passing visit of Jeanie Deans, or the birth of Robinson Crusoe. But there is this important difference in the cases, that the one story has found a place in literature from the strangely romantic cast of its facts, and the others from the intensely truthful air of their fictions.

Eugene Aram seems not to have been the high heroic character conceived by the novelist-not a hero of tragedy at all, nor a hero of any kind, but simply a poor egotistical littérateur, with a fine intellect set in a very inferior nature. He represents the extreme type of unfortunately a numerous class—the men of vigorous talent, in some instances of fine genius, who, though they can think much and highly of themselves, seem wholly unable to appreciate their true place and work, or the real dignity of their standing, and so are continually getting into false, unworthy positions—in some instances falling into little meannesses, in others into contemptible crimes. I am afraid it is all too evident that even the sage Bacon belonged to this class; and there can be little doubt that, though greatly less a criminal, the elegant and vigorous poet who described him as

"The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,"

belonged to it also. The phosphoric light of genius that throws so radiant a gloom athwart the obscurities of nature, has in some cases been carried by a frivolous insect, in some by a creeping worm: there are brilliant intellects of the fire-fly and of the glow-worm class; and poor Eugene Aram was one of them. In his character, as embodied in the evidence on which he was convicted and condemned, we see merely that of a felon of the baser sort-a man who associated with low companions, married a low wife, entered into low sharping schemes with a poor dishonest creature whom, early in his

career, he used to accompany at nights in stealing flower-roots -for they possessed in common a taste for gardening-and whom he afterwards barbarously murdered, to possess himself of a few miserable pounds, the proceeds of a piece of disreputable swindling, to which he had prompted him. Viewing him, however, in another phase, we find that this low felon possessed one of those vigorous intellectual natures that, month after month, and year after year, steadily progress in acquirement as the forest-tree swells in bulk of trunk and amplitude of bough―till at length, with scarce any educational advantages, there was no learned language which he had not mastered, and scarce a classic author which he had not read. And, finally, when the learned felon came to make his defence, all Britain was astonished by a piece of pleading that, for the elegance of the composition and the vigour of the thought, would have done no discredit to the most accomplished writers of the day. The defence of Eugene Aram, if given to the public among the defences, and under the name of Thomas Lord Erskine, so celebrated for this species of composition, would certainly not be deemed unworthy of the collection of its author. There can be no question that the Aram of Bulwer is a well-drawn character, and rich in the picturesque of tragic effect; but the exhibition is neither so melancholy nor so instructive as that of the Eugene Aram who was executed at York for murder in the autumn of 1759, and his body afterwards hung in chains at "the place called St. Robert's Cave, near Knaresborough."

CHAPTER III.

Quit York for Manchester-A character-Quaker lady-Peculiar feature in the hus bandry of the cloth district-Leeds-Simplicity manifested in the geologic framework of English scenery-The denuding agencies almost invariably the sole architects of the landscape-Manchester; characteristic peculiarities; the Irwell; collegiate church light and elegant proportions of the building; its grotesque sculptures; these indicative of the scepticism of the age in which they were produced-St. Bartholomew's day Sermon on Saints' day-Timothy's grandmother-The Puseyite a High-churchman become earnest-Passengers of a Sunday-evening train-Sabbath amusement not very conducive to happiness-The economic value of the Sabbath ill understood by the utilitarian-Testimony of history on the point.

On the following morning I quitted York for Manchester, taking Leeds in my way. I had seen two of the ecclesiastical cities of Old England, and I was now desirous to visit two of the great trading towns of the modern country, so famous for supplying with its manufactures half the economic wants of the world.

At the first stage from York we were joined by a young lady passenger, of forty or thereabouts, evidently a character. She was very gaudily dressed, and very tightly laced, and had a bloom of red in her cheeks that seemed to have been just a little assisted by art, and a bloom of red in her nose that seemed not to have been assisted by art at all. Alarmingly frank and portentously talkative, she at once threw herself for protection and guidance on "the gentlemen.” She had to get down at one of the intermediate stages, she said; but were she to be so unlucky as to pass it, she would not know what to do-she would be at her wit's end; but she trusted she would not be permitted to pass it; she threw herself upon the generosity of

the gentlemen-she always did, indeed; and she trusted the generous gentlemen would inform her, when she came to her stage, that it was time for her to get out. I had rarely seen, except in old play-books, written when our dramatists of the French school were drawing ladies'-maids of the time of Charles the Second, a character of the kind quite so stage-like in its aspect; and in a quiet way was enjoying the exhibition. And the passenger who sat fronting me in the carriage-an elderly lady of the Society of Friends-was, I found, enjoying it quite as much and as quietly as myself. A countenance of much transparency, that had been once very pretty, exhibited at every droll turn in the dialogue the appropriate expression. Remarking to a gentleman beside me that good names were surely rather a scant commodity in England, seeing they had not a few towns and rivers, which, like many of the American ones, seemed to exist in duplicate and triplicate they had three Newcastles, and four Stratfords, and at least two river Ouses-I asked him how I could travel most directly by railway to Cowper's Ouse. He did not know, he said; he had never heard of a river Ouse except the Yorkshire one, which I had just seen. The Quaker lady supplied me with the information I wanted, by pointing out the best route to Olney; and the circumstance led to a conversation which only terminated at our arrival at Leeds. I found her possessed, like many of the Society of Friends, whom Howitt so well describes, of literary taste, conversational ability, and extensive information; and we expatiated together over a wide range. We discussed English poets and poetry; compared notes regarding our critical formulas and canons, and found them wonderfully alike; beat over the Scottish Church question, and some dozen or so other questions besides; and at parting, she invited me to visit her at her house in Bedfordshire, within half a day's journey of Olney. She was at present residing with a friend, she said; but she would be at home in less than a fortnight; and there