street scene. Chimneys and smoke are the characteristics of all. Round Manchester there used to be, and perhaps are yet, some few homesteads of interest, but the majority of them are swept away. Speke Hall, near Liverpool, is quite an exceptionally fine building, but though it was for long a farm-house, and cattle were in rooms that adorn Nash’s _Mansions_, it is now again made into a residence. There is an old black-and-white house at Kenyon, formerly the residence of the Lord Chief-Justice Kenyon, but now empty; and perhaps, excepting another at Newton Junction, that must be familiar to all travellers between Manchester and Liverpool, there is nothing that can be regarded as very interesting. The Isle of Man stands so near Lancashire that it is often called a part of it, though indeed it is under a rule different from the rest of England, and does not return a member to Parliament, which of course, gives it the privilege of ruling its own finances. It has a Parliament of its own, and on the 5th of July, the acts they have passed are publicly read out on Tynwald Hill, about three miles to the east of Peel. Castleton is the seat of the governor of this singular island, and derives its name from an old fortress called Castle Rushen, which stands in the middle of the town, and is said, though with uncertain accuracy, to have been built by a Danish chief in the tenth century. Peel is a small seaport, and formerly was of much more importance than it now is. On a sort of small rocky island here is situated the celebrated Peel Castle that Scott has alluded to in his novel of “Peveril of the Peak,” a novel which has been of some little service in the present work, from the exceeding care and accuracy of its topographical detail. In concluding the present series of sketches of our ancient cities and homesteads, one is met by the question--Is it not possible in future buildings to adopt more of the old spirit, and relieve our streets from monotony? In reply to which it may readily be answered, that it is not only possible, but it would add greatly to the convenience and mercantile value of a street if such a course were adopted. The dreary rows of square-headed windows at even distances in long brick walls govern the rooms inside, and imperatively domineer over the convenience of the arrangement. A French writer, speaking of the palace of Versailles, at the time it was built, and regretting that a style had been adopted which demanded this precisely even fenestration, said that it caused a footman’s pantry to be lit by a huge window which had perforce to correspond with a row in a drawing-room on the same front, and perhaps had to be cut in two by a partition, to let the other half do duty for another minor apartment.