heery mirth and recreation. Superadded to all these
stimulants, there is a mineral spring at which the visitors, young
and old, drink most voluminously. I went down to it in the morning
before breakfast, and found it thronged by a multitude of men, women
and children, who drank off great goblets of it with astonishing
faith and facility. The rotunda was so filled with the fumes of
sulphur that I found it more easy to inhale than to imbibe, and
preferred to satisfy that sense as to the merits of the water.

The next day I reached the brave old city of Ripon. On the way I
stopped an hour or two at Ripley and visited the castle. The
building itself is a good specimen of the baronial hall of the olden
time. But the gardens and grounds constitute its distinguishing
feature. I never saw before such an exquisite arrangement of
flowers, even at Chatsworth or the Kew Gardens. All forms
imaginable were produced by them. The most extensive and elaborate
combination was a row of flower sofas reaching around the garden.
Each was from 20 to 30 feet in length. The seat was wrought in
geraniums of every tint, all grown to an even, compact surface,
presenting figures as diversified as the alternating hues could
produce. The back was worked in taller flowers, presenting the same
evenness of line and surface. On entering the garden gate and
catching the first sight of these beautiful structures, you take
them for veritable sofas, as perfectly wrought as anything was ever
done in Berlin wool.

Ripon is an interesting little city, with a fact-roll of history
reaching back into the dimmest centuries of the land. It has run
the gauntlet of all the Saxon, Danish, Scotch and Norman raids and
regimes. It was burnt once or twice by each of these races in the
struggle for supremacy. But with a plucky tenacity of life, it
arose successively out of its own ashes and spread its phoenix wings
to a new and vigorous vitality. A venerable cathedral looks down
upon it with a motherly face. Unique old buildings, with half their
centuries unrecorded and lost in oblivion, stand to this day in good
repair, as the homes of happy children, who play at marbles and the
last sports of the day just as if they were born in houses only a
year older than themselves. Institutions and customs older than the
cathedral are kept up with a filial faith in their virtue. One of
the most interesting of these, I believe, was established by the
Saxon Edgar