Before we proceed to point out to the visitor the numerous objects of interest within the city, we must conform to the fashion prevalent in such matters, and, tedious though it may seem, preface our description with a condensed sketch of the HISTORY OF CHESTER, Some historians there are who, dealing largely in the marvellous, have attributed to Chester an existence almost coeval with the Flood. Sir Thomas Elyot, for instance, writing about 1520, gravely asserts that the name of the city was originally Neomagus, and so called from its founder Magus, the grandson of Japhet, the son of Noah, who first planted inhabitants in these islands! Were this statement authenticated, Chester would hold the dignified position of the oldest city in the universe; but, credulous as we undoubtedly are on some points, we confess to a modicum of infidelity upon this. It may have been, and from its commanding position doubtless was, one of the earliest settlements of the aboriginal inhabitants, Ancient Britons or otherwise; but farther than this, no historian, desiring to be accurate, can safely go. Ranulph Higden, a shorn monk of Chester Abbey, attributes to the city a British foundation, namely, from Lleon Gawr, the vanquisher of the Picts, a giant of mammoth size and stature, who built a city here, chiefly _underground_, hewn out of the rock, and after a rude and disordered fashion. But let the “barefooted friar” speak for himself, from Wynkyn de Worde’s edition of his Chronicle, published A.D. 1495:— “The Cyte of Legyons, that is Chestre, in the marches of Englonde, towarde Wales, betwegne two armes of the see, that bee named _Dee_ and _Mersee_. Thys cyte in tyme of Britons, was hede and chyefe cyte of all Venedocia, that is, North Wales. Thys cyte in Brytyshe speche bete Carthleon, Chestre in Englyshe, and Cyte of Legyons also. For there laye a wynter the legyons that Julius Cezar sent for to wyne Irlonde. And after, Claudius Cezar sent legyons out of the cyte for to wynn the Islands that be called Orcades. Thys cyte hath plente of lyveland, of corn, of fleshe, and specyally of samon. Thys cyte receyveth grate marchandyse, and sendeth out also. Northumbres destroyed thys cyte sometyme, but Elfreda, lady of Mercia, bylded it agayn, and made it mouch more. “In thys cyte ben ways under erth, with vowtes and stone werke, wonderfully wrought, three chambred werkes, grete stones ingrave with old mannes names there in. Thys is that cyte that Ethelfrede, Kyng of Northumberlonde, destroyed, and sloughe there fast by nygh two thousonde monks of the mynster of Bangor. Thys is the cyte that Kyng Edgar cam to, some tyme, with seven Kyngs that were subject to hym.”