Handsome and commodious as is the present EASTGATE,—on every score but that of convenience, it is immeasurably inferior to its predecessor. Could we but look upon the structure as it existed only a hundred years ago, with its beautiful Gothic archway, flanked by two massive octagonal towers, four stories in height, supporting the Gate itself and the rooms above,—could we but resuscitate the time-worn embattlements of that “ancient of days,” we should wonder at and pity the spurious taste that decreed its fall. “Oh, but,” we may be told, “the present Gate was a public improvement.” A plague upon such improvements, say we! We should vastly have preferred, and so would every lover of the antique, whether citizen or stranger, to have retained the old Gate in its integrity, altered, had need been, to meet the growing wants of the times, rather than have thus consigned it to the ruthless hands of the destroyer. Oh! ye spirits of the valiant dead,—you who lost your lives defending this Gate against the cannons of Cromwell, why did ye not rise up from your graves, and arrest the mad course of that “age of improvement!” When this Gate was being demolished, the massive arches of the original Roman structure were laid bare to the view, and a portion of one of them is yet to be seen on the north-west side of the present Gateway. At this point we will turn away from the street, and, ascending the steps on the north-east side, will amuse ourselves in the next chapter with a quiet WALK ROUND THE WALLS OF CHESTER. CHAPTER III. The Walls of Chester, their builders and their history.—The Cathedral.—The Phœnix Tower, and the Walls during the Siege.—Beeston Castle.—The North Gate.—Training College.—Morgan’s Mount and Pemberton’s Parlour.—The Water Tower.—Infirmary and Gaol.—Linen Hall.—The Watergate. A WALK round the Walls of Chester! Now, then, for a choice _tête-à-tête_ with the past! Away with the commonplace nineteenth century! Away with the mammon-loving world of to-day! The path we are now treading, high above the busy haunts of men, has a traditionary halo and interest peculiarly its own. With the rapidity of thought, our imagination wanders some eighteen hundred years backwards on the stream of time, to the days when Marius, King of the Britons, to defend his royal city from the incursions of his enemies, built up a fortified wall around Chester. The Britons, however, were no masons; and their rude defences availed them little when opposed to the resistless career of Rome. Surrendered to its new masters, the Romans, Chester speedily gave unmistakeable evidence of the change. The mud-walls, or earthworks of the conquered, vanished before the imperial masonry of the conquerors; and the Walls of Chester, built as only Roman hands could build them, rose majestically in their place, clasping the city in an embrace of stone, defiant alike of time and of the foe.