Having, for these reasons, determined on a tour through Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, I left Edinburgh in the latter part of June. The readiest course for one proposing such a tour is, in general, either by the steamers which leave London, Hull, and Leith for Hamburg, or those which proceed from the two first of these ports to Copenhagen. At the time of my proposed journey, the Elbe was under blockade by the Danish navy, in consequence of the Sleswig-Holstein war. Copenhagen was therefore the only access. It is much to be regretted that there is no steamer direct from England to any port of Sweden and Norway. There was one to Gottenburg a few years ago; it was discontinued because it did not pay. According to Swedish report, an endeavour to revive it has been obstructed by a demand of the English government that only English steamers shall be employed; apparently a most unreasonable demand, and one not characteristic of the present policy. It would surely be much to be lamented if anything so advantageous to the two countries as a direct intercourse be really prevented by such petty difficulties. Let us hope that not another summer shall elapse without the revival of the Gottenburg steamer. A railway train conducted me from Edinburgh to Hull in the interval between breakfast and supper, allowing me three hours of pause at York, which I employed in a visit to the Minster. The consequences of the second conflagration of this superb building are now repaired, and the edifice is probably in a state of completeness, both as to building and decoration, which it never knew in Catholic times. I was led to reflect how strange it was that so much zeal had been expended in the reconstruction of this theatre of an extinct drama--for the Gothic church of the middle ages was strictly a theatre in which to present daily to mankind, under suitably impressive circumstances, the spectacle of a divine sacrifice which had been made for them. Under modern Christianity, this object exists no longer. The ancient church, accordingly, when too large to be rendered into an ordinary place of worship--as is the case with the English cathedrals--becomes, over and above the corner devoted to the reading of a liturgy, a mere antiquarian curiosity. It is strange that what was done in the twelfth century under the impulse of a powerful religious feeling, can now be done, and done more promptly and quickly, under a feeling almost purely romantic. We must of course rejoice that so beautiful a building as York Minster has been redeemed from the ruin into which it was accidentally thrown, and once more made worthy of the homage of the highest taste. Yet we cannot well forget that such works amongst us can only be something similative or imitative--what the Eglintoune tournament was to real chivalry. The paroxysm of public feeling in which such noble structures originated was a true thing, and one of the finest true things of its era. It is past--it can never be reproduced.