destitute of a home look. She said that she had seen two or three
coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow
passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of
those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes
underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and,
for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house
becomes so old as to be uutenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is
fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its
front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows
are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many
advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there being
within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to exhibit
their wares.

A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must be comparatively
modern; but there are some very ancient ones, with oaken frames visible
on the exterior. The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with
oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be as hard as stone,
which it might be mistaken for, if one did not see where names and
initials have been cut into it with knives at some bygone period.
Overhead, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low as almost to hit
the head. On the front of one of these buildings was the inscription,
"GOD'S PROVIDENCE IS MINE INHERITANCE," said to have been put there by
the occupant of the house two hundred years ago, when the plague spared
this one house only in the whole city. Not improbably the inscription
has operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of the house
hitherto; but a shopman of an adjacent dwelling told us that it was soon
to be taken down.

Here and there, about some of the streets through which the Rows do not