very commonplace in their youth; now time has so judiciously colored them, gnawed them, hung them with ivy and mosses and lichens, that they are beautiful, with a tender, perennial loveliness. Wandering through the cathedral, we found, strange to say, a memorial stone to one Thomas Phillipse, who was much praised for having remained loyal during the "late rebellion in his Majesty's colonies of North America, by which he lost much valuable land and all his riches," etc., etc. Thomas Phillipse lost the goodly town of Yonkers, on the Hudson, and many acres besides, and gained the ugly name of Tory over here; but there he lies in the odor of sanctity in Chester Cathedral, which is some compensation.
We went up to London through Shrewsbury, bought some "Shrewsbury cake," and thought of Falstaff fighting an hour by Shrewsbury clock. As we were talking and laughing over the former, a companion of ours in the railway carriage, who proved to be an English manufacturer, and who had been talking of America to us, said, "And so you know Shakespeare over there, and Byron too?" Our national vanity got another shock after this from a young lady who asked us if we had ever heard the music of Mendelssohn and Beethoven. However, our friend the manufacturer was extremely kind. He showed us the "Wrekin" in Shropshire, well known to all ballad-singers by the song "Round the Wrekin," which he said embodied a Shropshire custom. Not being a Shropshire man himself, he told us that the Shropshire people thought the world of themselves and were the most self-sufficient people in England.
We glided past the smoky chimneys of Wolverhampton, and finally, after a railway journey of four or five hours, rich in pictures to us, reached London.
