them all by walls, which should completely surround it. “The barbarous murder of that active and benevolent prelate by the insurgents under Wat Tyler on Tower Hill, June 14, 1381, put an end to this among many other appropriate and useful improvements planned for the advantage of his metropolitan city. The gatehouse he, however, completed, and it is an interesting feature among the numerous antiquities of the place. It crosses the high road from London to Dover, and serves as a protection to the bridge over the western branch of the Stour, which at this place is only a small stream. It is embattled and machicolated, and the grooves still remain which directed the fall of the portcullis. The arch is of subsequent date, and forms part of the reparations effected by Archbishop Juxon after the disturbance occasioned by the puritanical Mayor at Christmas 1647. The centre is flanked by the very lofty and spacious round towers, the foundations of which are laid in the river Stour. They are divided into two storeys, and are pierced with loopholes having circular endings, similar to those observable in the remains of the fortifications near Dane-John-Hill, and are embattled.” This gatehouse, when Britton wrote his description, was used as the city prison both for criminals and debtors. Canterbury is always associated with Chaucer’s wonderful work, the _Canterbury Tales_, and the accurate insight that this gives into the manners and customs of the time. The Tabard, afterwards the Talbot in Southwark, retained till comparatively recent times many of the features of the hostelry that it had when Chaucer described it. The landlord was a man of great mark, and his social importance is rather startling to our present ideas. His guests were composed of all ranks of people, and after their dinner was over he proposed a journey to Canterbury at his own cost and charges, and that he should judge the best story that any of them could narrate on the road, being “wise and well ytaught” himself. Chaucer’s characters of the guests are wonderfully clever and lifelike, even at the present day; but it is rather curious to find him so outspoken against the monk and friar, and contrasting them with the “poure parson of a town,” and “the clerk of Oxenford.” The former seems to have suggested Goldsmith’s village parson, and indeed it is impossible to read Chaucer’s description without being reminded of almost parallel passages, though Goldsmith’s are of course so much sweeter.