26, 1855, with a grand concert, at which Clara Novello and others officiated. [Picture: Music Hall, and Consistory Court] And now for our long-deferred visit to the venerable CATHEDRAL. Turning aside from the Music Hall, we pass a small gate, and are at once in close communion with the south-west side of this massive structure. We can see from this point, distinctly enough, the ancient cruciform character of the edifice, that fittest symbolical form of a Christian Church; the east end forming the choir and Lady Chapel,—the south transept the Parish Church of St. Oswald,—the north transept almost unappropriated,—and the west end the nave, into which latter we are now passing through a rich and handsome Tudor porch. And here let us observe that, as our knowledge of architectural detail is unhappily small, we must rely for our descriptions on the “dogmatic teaching” of other and abler heads. But first a word or two on the foundation and history of this fine old CATHEDRAL. Tradition avers that under the imperial dominion of pagan Rome, a temple, dedicated to Apollo, occupied the spot now consecrated to the Triune God; and that this temple had itself supplanted a still older fane of the superstitious Druids. However this may be, it is an historical fact, amply corroborated, that Wulpherus, King of the Mercians, who flourished about A.D. 660, and Ermenilde, his queen, perceiving the attachment of their daughter, St. Werburgh, to a religious life, built an Abbey at Chester, for her and such other pious ladies who should, in like manner, prefer a conventual life. To St. Peter and St. Paul this Saxon Abbey was dedicated. St. Werburgh, being prioress or patron of three Abbeys—Chester, Trentham, and Hanbury—died and was buried in the latter edifice; but owing to the threatened incursions of the Danes, her sacred relics were thence removed, two hundred years afterwards, to Chester, for greater security, and lodged in the Abbey her royal father had founded in her honour. About 907, Ethelfleda, Countess of Mercia, erected on the same site a nobler Abbey, dedicated to her whose shrine then rested there—the immaculate St. Werburgh. Thus matters remained for nearly two centuries, when Earl Hugh Lupus, nephew and favourite of the Conqueror, having lived a life of debauchery and excess, compounded for his sins by the erection of an edifice larger and more splendid than the last, founding there a Monastery of St. Bennet’s order, under the superintendence of Anselm, then abbot of Bec, in Normandy, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. A day or two before his death, Earl Hugh was shorn a monk of the Abbey his own remorseful bounty had founded. Immense possessions accrued to the Abbey, both from Hugh Lupus, the founder, and from his successors in the earldom. Early in the reign of Edward I., and in the abbacy of Simon _de Albo Monasterio_ (Whitchurch), the rebuilding of the Abbey was commenced. It continued slowly to progress, under