The walls of Chester are entire, and a complete circuit of the city may be made on them without once leaving the footwalk on their summit. These are the only complete walls in England, though at one time all considerable towns were similarly surrounded. The semicircular building shown here is the lower part of a tower that was taken down, and similar towers yet remain on the walls in a state of great preservation. Close by the tower here shown was an old hostelry called the “Blue Posts,” kept by Mrs. Mottershed in the year 1558. This was the year when Queen Mary reigned; and one Dr. Henry Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, was charged by his royal mistress with a commission to the council in Ireland, which had for its object the persecution of Irish Protestants. “In this house,” says Hemingway, “he was visited by the mayor, to whom, in the course of conversation, he related his errand, in confirmation of which he took from his cloak a leather box, exclaiming, in a tone of exultation, ‘Here is that which will lash the heretics of Ireland.’ This annunciation was caught by the landlady, who had a brother in Dublin, and while the commissioner was escorting his worship (who that year was Sir Lawrence Smith) down stairs, the good woman, prompted by an affectionate regard for the safety of her brother, opened the box, took out the commission, and placed in lieu of it a pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost. This the doctor carefully packed up, without suspecting the transformation, nor was the deception discovered till his arrival in the presence of the lord deputy and privy council at the castle of Dublin. The surprise of the whole assembly on opening the box containing the supposed commission may be more easily imagined than described. The doctor was sent back immediately for a more satisfactory authority, but before he could return to Ireland, Queen Mary had breathed her last. The ingenuity and affectionate zeal of the landlady were rewarded by Elizabeth with a pension of forty pounds a year.”