cription is
particularly interesting in showing that the Romans set up altars in
their palaces, thus explaining the reason for the Jews refusing to
enter the praetorium at Jerusalem when Christ was made prisoner,
because it was the Feast of the Passover.

We can see the restored front of the Guildhall overlooking the river
from Lendal Bridge, which adjoins the gates of the Abbey grounds, but
to reach the entrance we must go along the street called Lendal and
turn into a narrow passage. The hall was put up in 1446, and is
therefore in the Perpendicular style. A row of tall oak pillars on each
side support the roof and form two aisles. The windows are filled with
excellent modern stained glass representing several incidents in the
history of the city, from the election of Constantine to be Roman
Emperor, which took place at York in A.D. 306, down to the great dinner
to the Prince Consort, held in the hall in 1850.

The Church of St. Michael Spurriergate, built at the same period as the
Guildhall, is curiously similar in its interior, having only a nave and
aisles. The stone pillars are so slight that they are scarcely of much
greater diameter than the wooden ones in the civic structure, and some
of them are perilously out of plumb. There is much old glass in the
windows.

St. Margaret's Church has a splendid Norman doorway carved with the
signs of the zodiac; St. Mary's Castlegate is an Early English or
Transitional building transformed and patched in Perpendicular times;
St. Mary's Bishophill Junior has a most interesting tower, containing
Roman materials, and the list could be prolonged for many pages if
there were space.

We finally come back to the Minster, and entering by the south transept
door, realize at once in the dim immensity of the interior that we have
reached the crowning splendour of York. The great organ is filling the
lofty spaces with solemn music, carrying the mind far beyond petty
things.

Edwin's wooden chapel, put up in 627 for his baptism into the Christian
Church nearly thirteen centuries ago, and almost immediately replaced
by a stone structure, has gone, except for some possible fragments in
the crypt. Vanished, too, is the building that was standing when, in
1069, the Danes sacked and plundered York, leaving the Minster and city
in ruins, so that the great church as we see it belongs almost entirely
to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the towers being still
later.

CHAPTE