Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Christine D and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: Punctuation normalized, original spelling retained. [Illustration: "He stepped forward with a smile." For Percival. Page 420.] LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_. OCTOBER, 1877. Vol XX--No. 118 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. CHESTER AND THE DEE. TWO PAPERS.--I. [Illustration: THE DEE ABOVE BALA.] The history of Chester is that of a key. It was the last city that gave up Harold's unlucky cause and surrendered to William the Conqueror, and the last that fell in the no less unlucky cause of the Stuart king against the Parliamentarians. In much earlier times it was held by the famous Twentieth Legion, the _Valens Victrix_, as the key of the Roman dominion in the north-west of Britain, and at present it has peculiarities of position, as well as of architecture, which make it unique in England and a lodestone to Americans. Curiously planted on the border of the newest and most bustling manufacturing district in England, close to the coalfields of North Wales, the mines of Lancashire, the quays of its sea-rival Liverpool and the mills of grimy, wealthy Manchester, it still exercises, besides its artistic and historic supremacy, a _bona fide_ ecclesiastical sway over most of these new places. It is the first ancient city accessible to American travellers, many of whom have given practical tokens of their affectionate remembrance of it by largely subscribing to the fund for the restoration of the cathedral, a work that has already cost some eighty thousand pounds. [Illustration: CAER-GAI.]