like a summary of the records existing, under our very eyes, of Rome’s sojourn within these walls. Other and more antiquated guide-books have long ago exhausted and worn out these topics of interest, as well as the miserable woodcuts that illustrated them; it only remains therefore for us, in the body of our work, to enumerate a few of the more prominent and accessible of these remains. But another epoch was now rapidly dawning upon the world. Rome had passed the meridian of her splendour, and she who, so short a time before, was acknowledged mistress of the world, felt the tide of conquest and prosperity visibly ebbing away. Insurrections abroad, divisions, tumults, and murders at home, served but to aggravate and complete her fall. After the departure of the Romans from this island, Chester appears to have been alternately possessed by the Britons, the Saxons, and the Danes; by the latter, however, it was held but a very short period, being restored to the Saxons by the valiant daughter of Alfred the Great, Ethelfleda, the wife of Ethelred, Prince of Mercia. This lady is said to have repaired the city and rebuilt the walls in 907, and, as some affirm, considerably added to their former extent. After her death, the city again fell into the hands of the British princes, from whom it was recovered in 924 by King Egbert, whose death almost immediately followed this event. National affairs were then conducted according to that good old-fashioned plan, That they shall take who have the power, And they shall keep who can. From this period to the Conquest, Chester has nothing of a tale to tell; but on the accession of William the Conqueror, he created his nephew Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, at the same time investing him with supreme authority throughout the county and city, so that he held as absolute a regal sway within those limits as the king himself had in his dominions. For one hundred and sixty years did Hugh Lupus and his successors, the seven Norman Earls of Chester, exercise their petty sovereignty over the city and county, until the death of Earl John Scot, in 1237, when Henry III. took the earldom, with all the powers annexed to it, into his own hands; and from that period to the present it has been held by the English Crown. The title of Earl of Chester was conferred by Henry upon his eldest son, afterwards Edward I. It has ever since been vested in the reigning monarch’s eldest son, and is now enjoyed by his Royal Highness, Albert, Prince of Wales, the hopeful heir of our beloved Queen.