and sung the next day in Wrexham Church. The original manuscript is in a
collection at Liverpool, and the printer who set up the type when a boy was
still living at Wrexham within the last twenty years.

[Illustration: CHESTER, FROM THE ALDFORD ROAD.]

The river now makes a turn, sweeping along into English ground and making
almost a natural moat round Chester, the great Roman camp whose form and
intersecting streets still bear the stamp of Roman regularity, and whose
history long bore traces of the influence of Roman inflexibility mingled
with British dash. The view of the city is fine from the Aldford road (or
Old Ford, where a Roman pavement is sometimes visible in the bed of the
stream), with the cathedral and St. John's towering over the peaks and
gables that shoot up above the walls. The mention of the ford brings to
mind a famous crossing of the river during the civil wars. It was just
before the battle of Rowton Moor, which Charles I. watched from the tower
that now bears his name; and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, one of his leal
soldiers, wishing to send the king notice of his having crossed the Dee at
Farndon Bridge and pressing on the Parliamentarians, bade Colonel Shakerley
convey the message as speedily as possible. The latter, to avoid the long
circuit by the bridge, galloped to the Dee, took a wooden tub used for
slaughtering swine, employed "a batting-staff, used for batting of coarse
linen," as an oar, put his servant in the tub, his horse swimming by him,
and once across left the tub in charge of the man while he rode to the
king, delivered his message and returned to cross over the same way.

[Illustration: CORACLES.]

Eaton and Wynnestay are the grandest of the Dee country-seats, though not
the most interesting as to architecture. The former, like many Italian