the Wilberforce Monument, a pillar of sandstone seventy-two
feet high, erected about a half century ago, and surmounted by a statue
of the celebrated philanthropist. He was born on High Street August 24,
1759, this being the most important thoroughfare in ancient Hull, but
now a narrow and inconvenient lane following the right bank of the Hull
River. Here were in former days the houses of the great Hull merchants,
and the Wilberforce House is about halfway down the street. It is a
curious specimen of brickwork, of a style said to have been imported
from Flanders in the reign of William and Mary. It is a low, broad house
with a surmounting tower over the doorway. Hull has little else of
interest in the way of buildings. Its Holy Trinity Church, in the
market-place, is the largest parish church in England, having recently
been thoroughly restored, and the Town Hall, built in the Italian style,
with a clock-tower, is its finest edifice of modern construction.

[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE WILBERFORCE WAS BORN.]

[Illustration: ENTRANCE-GATE, BEVERLEY.]

We have now come into Yorkshire, and a few minutes' ride northward by
railway along the valley of the Hull River brings the visitor to
Beverley, an old-fashioned Yorkshire town of considerable antiquity,
eight miles from the seaport. This was anciently a walled town, but of
the entrance-gates only one survives, the North Bar, of the time of
Edward III. It is a good specimen of brick architecture, with mouldings
and niches upon the surface and battlements at the top. This is a
favorite old town for the retired merchant and tradesman who wish to
pass the declining years of life in quiet, and it contains many ancient
buildings of interest. Several of these are clustered around the
picturesque market-square, which is an enclosure of about four acres,
and contains a quaint cross, a relic of the time when it was customary
to build market-crosses. These ancient crosses, which were practically
canopies erected over a raised platform, were generally used as pulpits
by the preachers when conducting religious services in the open air.
Sometimes they were memorials of the dead. We are told that there were
formerly five thousand of these crosses of various kinds in England, but
most of them were destroyed in the Civil Wars. At these old crosses
proclamations used to be read and tolls collected from the
market-people. The covered market-cross at Beverley was one of the last
that was erec