in the upper room of the Gallery, and spent a few minutes over a painting representing Mrs. Siddons in one of Shakspere’s characters.  This is by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is only one of the many pieces that we have seen of this great artist.  His genius was vast, and powerful in its grasp.  His fancy fertile, and his inventive faculty inexhaustible in its resources.  He displayed the very highest powers of genius by the thorough originality of his conceptions, and by the entirely new path that he struck out in art.  Well may Englishmen be proud of his name.  And as time shall step between his day and those that follow after him, the more will his works be appreciated.  We have since visited his grave, and stood over his monument in St. Paul’s.

LETTER XI.

York Minster—­The Great Organ—­Newcastle-on-Tyne—­The Labouring Classes—­The American Slave—­Sheffield—­James Montgomery.

January, 1850.

Some days since, I left the Metropolis to fulfil a few engagements to visit provincial towns; and after a ride of nearly eight hours, we were in sight of the ancient city of York.  It was night, the moon was in her zenith, and there seemed nothing between her and the earth but glittering gold.  The moon, the stars, and the innumerable gas-lights, gave the city a panoramic appearance.  Like a mountain starting out of a plain, there stood the Cathedral in all its glory, looking down upon the surrounding buildings, with all the appearance of a Gulliver standing over the Lilliputians.  Night gave us no opportunity to view the Minster.  However, we were up the next morning before the sun, and walking round the Cathedral with a degree of curiosity seldom excited within us.  It is thought that a building of the same dimensions would take fifty years to complete it at the present time, even with all the improvements of the nineteenth century, and would cost no less than the enormous sum of two millions of pounds sterling.  From what I had heard of this famous Cathedral, my expectations were raised to the highest point; but it surpassed all the idea that I had formed of it.  On entering the building, we lost all thought of the external appearance by the matchless beauty of the interior.  The echo produced by the tread of our feet upon the floor as we entered, resounding through the aisles, seemed to say “Put off your shoes, for the place whereon you tread is holy ground.”  We stood with hat in hand, and gazed with wonder and astonishment down the incomparable vista of more than five hundred feet.  The organ, which stands near the centre of the building, is said to be one of the finest in the world.  A wall, in front of which is a screen of the most gorgeous and florid architecture and executed in solid stone, separates the nave from the service choir.  The beautiful workmanship of this makes it appear so perfect, as almost to produce the belief that it is tracery work of wood.  We