York minster has often been described, but no description can convey an adequate impression of its grandeur. Canterbury is the lovelier cathedral of the two, though not the grander, and Canterbury possesses the inestimable advantage of a spacious close. It must be said also, for the city of Canterbury, that the presence and influence of a great church are more distinctly and delightfully felt in that place than they are in York. There is a more spiritual tone at Canterbury, a tone of superior delicacy and refinement, a certain aristocratic coldness and repose. In York you perceive the coarse spirit of a democratic era. The walls, that ought to be cherished with scrupulous care, are found in many places to be ill-used. At intervals along the walks upon the banks of the Ouse you behold placards requesting the co-operation of the public in protecting from harm the swans that navigate the river. Even in the cathedral itself there is displayed a printed notice that the Dean and Chapter are amazed at disturbances which occur in the nave while divine service is proceeding in the choir. These things imply a rough element in the population, and in such a place as York such an element is exceptionally offensive and deplorable. It was said by the wise Lord Beaconsfield that progress in the nineteenth century is found to consist chiefly in a return to ancient ideas. There may be places to which the characteristic spirit of the present day contributes an element of beauty; but if so I have not seen them. Wherever there is beauty there is the living force of tradition to account for it. The most that a conservative force in society can accomplish, for the preservation of an instinct in favour of whatever is beautiful and impressive, is to protect what remains from the past. Modern Edinburgh, for example, has contributed no building that is comparable with its glorious old castle, or with Roslin, or with what we know to have been Melrose or Dryburgh; but its castle and its chapels are protected and preserved. York, in the present day, erects a commodious railway-station and a sumptuous hotel, and spans its ample river with two splendid bridges; but its modern architecture is puerile beside that of its ancient minster; and so its best work, after all, is the preservation of its cathedral. The observer finds it difficult to understand how anybody, however lowly born or poorly endowed or meanly nurtured, can live within the presence of that heavenly building, and not be purified and exalted by the contemplation of so much majesty, and by its constantly irradiative force of religious sentiment and power. But the spirit which in the past created objects of beauty and adorned common life with visible manifestations of the celestial aspiration in human nature had constantly to struggle against insensibility or violence; and just so the few who have inherited that spirit in the present day are compelled steadily to combat the hard