churches,--crumbling relics of ancient ecclesiastical power,--distinctly
visible. Through the plain, and far away toward the south and east, ran
the silver thread of the Ouse, while all around, as far as the eye could
see, stretched forth a smiling landscape of green meadow and cultivated
field; here a patch of woodland, and there a silver gleam of wave; here a
manor house nestled amid stately trees, and there an ivy-covered fragment
of ruined masonry; and everywhere the green lines of the flowering
hedge....

In the city that lies at your feet stood once the potent Constantine, to
be proclaimed Emperor, A.D. 306, and to be vested with the imperial purple
of Rome. In the original York Minster (the present is the fourth church
that has been erected upon this site) was buried that valiant soldier,
"old Siward," whom "gracious England" lent to the Scottish cause, under
Malcolm and Macduff, when time at length was ripe for the ruin of Glamis
and Cawdor. Close by is the field of Stamford, where Harold defeated the
Norwegians with terrible slaughter, only nine days before he was himself
defeated, and slain, at Hastings. Southward, following the line of the
Ouse, you look down upon the ruins of Clifford's Tower, built by King
William the Conqueror in 1068, and destroyed by the explosion of its
powder magazine in 1684. Not far away is the battlefield of Towton. King
Henry the Sixth and Queen Margaret were waiting in York for news of the
event of that fatal battle,--which, in its effect, made them exiles, and
bore to supremacy the rightful standard of the White Rose. In this church
King Edward the Fourth was crowned, 1464, and King Richard the Third was
proclaimed king and had his second coronation.

Southward you can see the open space called the Pavement, connecting with
Parliament Street, and the red brick church of St. Crux. In the Pavement
the Earl of Northumberland was beheaded for treason against Queen