A walled city generally holds more easily that elusive quality of romance for which the intelligent mind so often hungers than a town that has long ago discarded its old tower-studded girdle. And among the half-dozen or more English towns still possessed of their old mural defences Canterbury holds a high place, because within its walls there are still, in spite of railways and motors and the horrors of twentieth-century advertising, a hundred byways and nooks where the atmosphere of Elizabethan and pre-Reformation England still lurks. The wall itself does not stand out with the splendid completeness of York or Conway, and on the western side it has vanished altogether, while of the seven or eight gates, one only--the West Gate--has been saved; yet, while walking in the narrow, picturesque streets, it is difficult to forget that Canterbury is a walled city. Until well into last century all the gates were standing; but one by one these ornaments were destroyed by the city until one only was left, and even that would have been wantonly sacrificed to facilitate the entry of some circus caravans when, in 1850, Wombwell's menagerie visited the city! This vandal showman actually dared to request the Corporation to demolish the gate on account of the difficulty of getting his procession through the low arch. This is hard to believe, but it is infinitely more difficult to understand the aboriginal minds of some of the members of the Corporation when the records unblushingly reveal that the showman's preposterous request not only found both a proposer and a seconder, but that the votes were equally divided on the matter, and it was only the Mayor's casting vote which has preserved for the city its noble entry. Such a searchlight as this, throwing into dazzling clearness the almost entire lack of appreciation for its historic buildings possessed by the controllers of the city must make one grateful for the happy chances which have permitted so much that is old and picturesque to survive. [Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, FROM WITHIN. This is the only survivor of the gates which studded the mediæval walls of the city.]