e good Bishop
Heber wrote the favorite hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains." Then
the Dee flows on past the ducal palace of Eaton Hall, and encircles
Chester, which has its race-course, "The Roodee"--where they hold an
annual contest in May for the "Chester Cup"--enclosed by a beautiful
semicircle of the river. Then the Dee flows on through a straight
channel for six miles to its estuary, which broadens among treacherous
sands and flats between Flintshire and Cheshire, till it falls into the
Irish Sea. Many are the tales of woe that are told of the "Sands o'
Dee," along which the railway from Chester to Holyhead skirts the edge
in Flintshire. Many a poor girl, sent for the cattle wandering on these
sands, has been lost in the mist that rises from the sea, and drowned by
the quickly rushing waters. Kingsley has plaintively told the story in
his mournful poem:

"They rowed her in across the rolling foam--
The cruel, crawling foam,
The cruel, hungry foam--
To her grave beside the sea;
But still the boatmen hear her call her cattle home
Across the Sands o' Dee."

[Illustration: THE "SANDS O' DEE."]

FLINT AND DENBIGH.

Let us now journey westward from the Dee into Wales, coming first into
Flintshire. The town of Flint, it is conjectured, was originally a Roman
camp, from the design and the antiquities found there. Edward I., six
hundred years ago, built Flint Castle upon an isolated rock in a marsh
near the river, and after a checquered history it was dismantled in the
seventeenth century. From the railway between Chester and Holyhead the
ruins of this castle are visible on its low freestone rock; it is a
square, with round towers at three of the corners, and a massive keep at
the other, formed like a double tower and detached from the main castle.
This was the "dolorous castle" into which Richard II. was inveigled at
the beginning of his imprisonment, which ended with abdication, and
finally his death at Pomfret. The story is told that Richard had a fine
greyhound at Flint Castle that often caressed him, but when the Duke of
Lancaster came there the greyhound suddenly left Richard and caressed
the duke, who, not knowing the dog, asked Richard what it meant.
"Cousin," replied the king, "it means a great deal for you and very
little for me. I understand by it that this greyhound pays his court to
you as King of England, which you will surely be, and I shall be
deposed, for the natural