be found in and about Broadstairs; and the spot itself is charming. With some occupation, and with pursuits requiring quiet, one may pass a blessed time there. The little green esplanade above the cliffs, with its neat row of houses; the hills that slope away from the shore; the miniature port with its rough quay, and small coasters and fishing-boats; and the glorious open sea, afford delight to the eye. Away from the cliffs and behind the town are some little green enclosures, flanked on one side by small clean-looking houses that look delightfully cool and quiet-almost like the inner courts of some Benedictine convent in Italy.

About midway-going coastwise between Broadstairs and Margate is Kingsgate, daintily situated on another small bay or inlet. But Kingsgate is a place where we only refresh ourselves at the pleasant inn on the green hill, or where we only pic-nic in the cool grottos below; or lounge for an hour on the edge of the cliff, to look at that ivy-covered building on the opposite side of the inlet; for there are no lodging-houses here -nothing but the preventive service station, a small cottage or two, our Castle' yonder, and one or two gentlemens' houses behind us. Besides, in this hollow, we have rather a bad name for fever and ague at certain seasons of the year.

Loiterer, be not romantic in the wrong place, nor fancy that our Castle' is a relic of the feudal ages, nor conjure up knights in mailed armour to look over its battlements. What you see is but a modern antique. This was explained to an elderly gentlewoman, who had an eye for the picturesque and a sort of taste for the romantic, with more energy than politeness, by one of our Margate boatmen who helped to row her to Kingsgate. "What a beautiful old ruinous castle," said the lady, "I wonder how many hundred years old it is?" "Lor' Ma'm," said the boatman, "'t aint much older than yourself; for my father help'd to build it." The lady was quite overcome. And truly, those round flint towers, and those battlements, were all built by a not very popular nobleman, in the time of George III.; in the early part of

"Good King George's days, when 't was the fashion"

to alter or knock down what was really old and venerable, and to build up shams. His lordship had the reputation of being a time-serving politician and a dishonest placeman. Gray, the Poet, could have had no very good opinion of him, when, on visiting Kingsgate in 1766, he wrote those terrible lines

"Old and abandoned by each venal friend
Here Hd formed the pious resolution
To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.
On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice;
Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand!
Here sea-gulls scream and cormorants rejoice,
And mariners, tho' shipwreck'd, dread to land.
Here reign the blustering north, and blighting east;
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing," &c.

The old people of the neighbourhood, when we were boys, had many evil traditions of this sham antique Castle, and of unseemly orgies which they said its interior had witnessed. But these are unpleasant recol

lections, jarring with the tranquillity and pleasantness of the spot; and though a mere sham, there is beauty about our Kingsgate 'Castle.' It stands up from a beautiful green slope; and the ivy of eighty years' growth has decorated its walls and towers, and made them picturesque. them picturesque. If the present worthy owner of the property would only knock out those modern sash windows, and replace them with the true old stone window-frames and their mullions, the effect would be greatly improved. But the worthy owner has a beautiful seat elsewhere, and lets the Castle to a tenant from London.

When we want to enjoy the real antique, and to go back for a few hours to the best period of the monastic times, we walk across our little island to Minster and Monkton; and when we want to go back to the Roman period, we stretch along the isle either to Richborough or to Reculver.

Minster is a delightful village, with many old cottages and houses, gable-ended and picturesque, and, with all its new houses, smug, formal, and unpicturesque, like nearly all the houses that are built now-a-days in country places. Here we stand on ground the first that was trodden by Christian feet. Here we are in the midst of monkish legends and traditions-some of them the most naïve, the most primitively simple that are to be found in Chronicle or Hagiology. Time, which spares nothing, and that fanaticism which would not spare even what was ancient, and venerable, and beautiful, and connected with the earliest periods of our history as a Christian people, have not spared that fine old church before you. Its tower is dilapidated, its old steeple gone-that mean tapering thing of plank and rafter is but another sham-another modern antique. Nearly all the stone mullions are gone; they have put vile modern windows into the body of the church; they have built up a wooden pent-house-fitter to be a watch-box or a hen-house-as a portico to the entrance; they have not left on the exterior one of the many antique images which decorated it in the olden time. That leaden roofing, you see, has not been there very long; they put it up when the church was going to utter ruin, and becoming wet and dirty as the commonest farm-yard stable. The name of one of the last of the destructionists has been recorded in local history: "Richard Culmer, a furious bigot in his own conceits, got the sequestration of this vicarage

on the refusal of the learned Doctor Casaubon to take the covenant." This was early in the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament. On the top of the old spire there was a wooden cross, and above that a cross made of iron. Our Richard Culmer could not rest quiet until he levelled these old things. It should appear that the villagers had more taste and better feeling than he, and that he was afraid they might interfere with his work of destruction, for he went to work himself, alone, by moonlight, and fixed ladders to the steeple. He then hired two labourers of the parish, who ascended to the top of the spire, and did not come down again until they had destroyed the

erosses. "But," says the worthy old Protestant divine, whose book we are following, "if all figures of a cross are monuments of idolatry and to be removed, the poor man had done his work but by halves, or rather not at all, when he took down these from the spire, and left the church standing which is built in the form of a cross."*

But if we enter the church of Minster-once the church of a splendid and most wealthy monastery-we shall find matter whereupon to congratulate the good taste of our later days. The chancel has been beautifully and perfectly restored; its walls have been scraped clear of the plaster and accumulated white washings which Vandalism had put upon them; its round-headed long windows have been restored to their pristine condition; its open carved oak seats have been repaired, and completed where they had been broken away and carried off for fire-wood-the beauty of holiness reigns again in this chancel; other repairs and restorations have been effected in the body of the church; and the whole is kept in a truly exemplary state of neatness and cleanliness. More would be done but for the pride and prejudice of the Minster parishioners. These farmers—these tillers of the soil— these village shopkeepers or mechanics-these genteel families of yesterday's growth, have their spheres and distinctions and stone walls of separation; they must have their big ugly tall pews, and their doors and their locks and keys and their hassocks; they cannot worship the God that made them upon a footing of equality with the poor, or with their neighbours; and therefore these vile deal enclosures-these pens for Christians to worship in-are all left standing to the destruction of the harmony and effect of the ancient and holy edifice. Is there never to be an end to these unchristian-like feelings? Are men never to learn that the first sentiment on entering a church ought to be that of humility? Are we to despair of the coming of the day when even the very greatest and wealthiest among us shall feel how poor a worm he is when brought to pray before the Almighty God? Is every Catholic country in Europe to continue to show us examples in this respect which put every thinking Englishman to the blush?

All that has been done in the interior of Minster church, has been done quite recently, and at the sole expence of the vicar of Minster, the Reverend Frederick Vernon Lockwood, one of the Canons of Christ Church, Canterbury. His taste is as conspicuous as his liberality.

This is generally believed to be the oldest Christian church in England, with the exception only of Saint Martin's, Canterbury. Thorne, the Monkish Chronicler, native of this parish, and a monk of St. Augustin's, Canterbury, tells us that a monastery was founded here Anno Domino, 670; and he gives a legend explanatory of the occasion, which smacks of the very oldest time. There are many other legends attached to Minster; The History and Antiquities, Ecclesiastical and Civil, of the Isle of Tenet in Kent. By John Lewis M.A. London 1723. This worthy old clergyman was vicar of Margate, and, we believe, a native of the Isle.

but we have not space to go into these visions of the past. The Danes were terrible enemies to the church and to the holy nuns. The father of King Canute burned it down, and scattered the poor virgins, and seized upon their lands, about the year 1027. But King Canute, himself becoming a devout Christian, and making a pilgrimage to the Church of St. Peter's, at Rome, tarried for a season among the monks of St. Augustin's, at Canterbury; and there vowed a vow, that if by the grace of God, and the assistance of Saint Augustin, he should be brought back again in safety into his own kingdom, he would give the body of the blessed Saint Mildred to these excellent Canterbury Monks, and would grant unto them the lands which in the first days of the felicity of the church had appertained to the godly house of Minster. And Canute came back safe, and kept his vow like a Christian King. It was found that the barbarous Danes had not been able to burn the stone work of the church the two chapels of Saint Mary, and Saint Peter, and Saint Paul, remained almost entire.

The nave or body of the church is the oldest part of the building. Parts of the walls may be much older, but most of what remains appears to be the work of the eleventh century. The pillars are thick and short, and the arches all circular. Unless it be buried under plastering, there is but very little stone carving or ornament of any kind. A low roof rested upon the arches and pillars, "according to the plainness and simplicity of those times;" but, some centuries later, walls were built over the arches, and the roof was raised. In the north wall there is an ancient tomb or coffin of solid stone. The inscription is now defaced and illegible; but that hunter after old tombs and monumental inscriptions, Wever, could in his time read these words in old French and the Gothic character:

"Ici gist Edile de Thorne que fut dame del espine."*

On the floor of the church are several large flat grave-stones, which seem to be very ancient, and which once recorded the names of the abbesses and nuns of the House; but the rubbing of rustic shoes have effaced nearly all the letters. In the chancel are the hollows in which were three small monumental brasses -the effigies of some lady abbesses; but the brasses have been dug out, and carried off. There are other funeral monuments in the church, of far less antiquity, but still old, that may interest the lover of old things, and make half-an-hour in the old church pass off more pleasantly.

The farms about Minster are large and fine. The parish had once the reputation of having more large farms than any other parish in Kent. Most of the land is exceedingly fertile. We have seen corn-fields, almost within the shadow of Minster Church, equal to any that are to be found in England. The best of this land was reclaimed from the watery waste, and secured by the monks. You may walk along the broad embankments, and the 'balks' and 'lynches' which they made long before the Norman Conquest. Some of * Here lies Edile de Thorne, Lady of the Thorn.

them still retain their old names, as the 'Abbot's Wall,' and the like. The country hereabout abounds in trees, and in very pleasant orchards, productive of fine fruit.

From Old Minster to Old Monkton is a delightful walk of about a mile and a half, across rich corn-fields and through shady lanes. Branching off from the road, and descending towards the Stour and the marshes, there are two of the prettiest lanes that can be seen anywhere, being alcoved with tall trees that meet above and form a continuous arch over-head, green, cool, and delicious in the warmest day. The church of Monkton, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, is another most ancient Christian edifice. It was once much larger than it now is; and a splendid Priory of which you may find some slight traces in the picturesque farm-house and farm-yard close by, was united to it by arcades and cloisters. Here, too, we have a few funeral monuments and other relics of the monastic ages. The place was called Monkton,

or Monkstown, because it belonged to the Monks of Christ Church, Canterbury. It is now but a small village; but in ancient times it was far more considerable, having a weekly market and a yearly fair. The churchyard is green and picturesque; and just outside of its walls there stands a pair of stocks-that ancient thoroughly Saxon instrument, which was once found in every country town and in every village, but which of late years has almost entirely disappeared. It does

not appear that the monks always lived in good harmony with their tenants. There are traditions of serious quarrels and actual conflicts between them at Monkton, on the score of rents and dues, and services, and offerings. Early in the fourteenth century there were terrible squabbles at Minster. Six hundred men met together the Friday before the Feast of Saint Nicholas; they were armed with bows and arrows, swords and staves, and they laid siege to the Lord Abbot's manorhouses at Minster and Salmanstone. The monks could not go out of doors for fifteen days, but the insurgents could not burn the houses (which they tried to do) nor break into them. These rough tenants, however, burned down the outhouses, and destroyed seven ploughs, and as many carts, the property of my Lord Abbot. And did they not also fell and carry away all the trees that had been growing near the house at Salmanstone? And has it not been in consequence of this impious attack on the property of Mother Church, that no tree has ever since grown at that place?

The village of St. Nicholas, as it is now called, or 'St. Nicholas-at-Wade,' as it was called in the old time, has also a fine old church, which was once a chapel to the more magnificent structure at Reculver. Birchington shows another curious old church; and St. Peter's boasts of another. All these places are interesting; but we must close, for

"fresh fields and pastures new."

MANCHESTER has carved out a place for itself on the world's map a place, in many respects, unparalleled among busy towns.

If we glance over our own huge and ever active metropolis-London, we find that the sources whence the materials of industry are derived, are almost as diversified as the branches of that industry itself. If, regarding the whole West Riding of Yorkshire as one gigantic town (and the clothing towns and villages are so linked together as almost to bear that character), we watch its industrial proceedings, we observe that the material worked upon, although in part imported, is largely grown in the adjacent counties. If the busy workshops of Sheffield and Birmingham be examined, there we find that although Swedish iron, and Chilian gold, and Mexican silver are employed, British iron is the main staple on which the lusty arm and the skilful fingers are employed. If we visit the extraordinary knot of 'Pottery' towns, one of the most singular assemblages in the kingdom, we find that our own country mainly supplies the potter with the materials whereon his ingenuity is to be displayed: Cornwall its fine clay; Dorset its less costly clay; Stourbridge its fire-clay; Kent its flints. If the glass-maker on the Tyne or the Wear; or the carpet-maker of Glasgow or Kidderminster; or the tanner of Bermondseywere asked to name the materials on which his labour is bestowed, he would say that, though foreign countries aid in furnishing a supply, our own England yields the larger bulk.

But what do we see at Manchester? Every fibre of the cotton-of the five hundred millions of pounds which our spinners work up into yarn every year— must be brought over the seas. Never was dependence more complete than that of the Manchester man on foreign supplies. Cotton is the great moving principle that keeps Manchester alive; and the tropical agriculturist, and the ship-owner, and the merchant, must perform their parts, before the cotton can reach the spindles and looms of the North. It is true that some such principle of commercial inter-dependence marks more or less all branches of industrial economy; but there is no other example in the world, perhaps, of so immense a branch of manufacture being so completely at the mercy of a supply of raw material from districts thousands of miles away.

Manchester, however, was not always the cotton metropolis. It was a notable Lancashire town centuries before the Arkwrights and the Strutts, the Kays and the Hargreaves, the Cromptons and the Peels, set on foot those great enterprizes which have astonished the world. Situated in the south-eastern part of the county, it has the river Mersey flowing at a few miles distance from it on the south; and this same Mersey, after being applied to numberless industrial purposes at Ashton and at Stalybridge, at Dukinfield and at Hyde, at Stockport and at Warrington, winds its

course between Lancashire and Cheshire, and enters the Irish Sea at the point where the two opposite neighbours, Liverpool and Birkenhead, lie in wait to catch commerce from whatever quarter it may arrive. The three Manchester rivers flow into the Mersey; and this has without doubt contributed to the prosperity of the town in no inconsiderable degree; but still there must have been a number of concurrent circumstances tending by different roads towards the same end.

MANCHESTER IN PAST AGES.

Let us look a little to the past, before describing the Manchester of our own days.

How old is Manchester? Did its founders' come over with the Conqueror;' or were they the sturdy Romans of older times? That the Romans fixed a station at a place since called Castlefield, and gave to it the name of Mancunium; that a town and castle were afterwards built near this station, the castle being called Mancastle, and that a Saxon town replaced the old one about the year 627; that this Saxon town was destroyed by the Danes in the ninth century; that Edward, King of the Mercians, fortified and garrisoned the town in the tenth century-these are pretty nearly all the facts which Whitaker, the historian of the town, could gather concerning Manchester anterior in date to the Norman Conquest. It was called Mamcestre in Doomsday Book, and it was said to have then contained two churches, those of St. Mary and St. Michael. In 1301 a charter was granted to Manchester, constituting it a free borough.

The fifteenth century brings us to the period when Manchester obtained rank as a collegiate town, and when one of the few antiquities that the town can boast was reared. Thomas Lord de la Warr, in 1422, founded a college, which was to consist of a warden and eight fellows, of whom two were parish priests; two canons, four deacons, two clerks, and six choristers. Three thousand pounds were expended in the building of the college: a sum small in a modern estimate; but considerable in days when an ox was valued at £1 15s., a sheep at 5s., a quarter of wheat at 11s., a gallon of ale at twopence, and a day-labourers' wages at threepence. The foundation of the college was speedily followed by the erection of the collegiate church, or Christ's church, often called the Cathedral, beyond all question the finest structure in Manchester.

Those were days in which one great manufacturer was sufficient to render a town famous. Cuthbert 0. Kendal, Hodgeskins of Halifax, and Byrom of Manchester, were named as three famous clothiers ;' each of whom kept a great number of servants at work, spinners, carders, weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen,

&c.

Camden speaks of the Manchester cottons' which were celebrated in his day; but it is now pretty well understood that 'cotton' was then the name of a