Having just passed _under_ one arch, we are now walking _over_ another which spans an abyss formed by the deep cut of the Ellesmere and Chester Canal. Yon little parallel archway, a few yards to the westward of us, is the _Bridge of Death_,—the path along which the felons about to die usually went to receive the “last consolation of the church” in the Chapel of St. John, on the opposite side of the gulf. [Picture: Northgate, and Bluecoat Hospital] Pass we on once more for a few yards, and then turning round, a prospect awaits us the very similitude of that depicted in our engraving. To the left we have the NORTHGATE, and portion of the WALLS—those rare old Walls!—while the foreground to the right is occupied by that useful charitable institution, the BLUE-COAT HOSPITAL. For centuries prior to the great Civil War there stood, on this site, a venerable asylum, founded by Randal, Earl of Chester, for “poore and sillie persons,” under the name of the HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. In the reign of Edward III., a jury of free citizens was sworn to report on the “vested rights” of this house, and the verdict these worthies returned was this:— “That there ought to be, and have accustomed to be, in the said Hospital, three chaplains to say mass daily—two in the church, and the third in the chapel—before the poor and feeble sustained in the said Hospital; and that one lamp ought to be sustained at mass every day in the said Hospital, and to burn every night in the whole year; and that thirteen beds, competently clothed, should be sustained in the same Hospital, and receive thirteen poor men of the same city; whereof each shall have for daily allowance a loaf of bread, a dish of pottage, half a gallon of competent ale, and a piece of fish or flesh, as the day shall require.” Not bad fare this for the thirteen brethren, “poore and feeble,” who, from all we can judge, Must have gone to bed merry (as who could fail), On their foaming “half-gallons of competent ale!”