g it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful,--have stamped this
poor lady's face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or
other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just
before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the
famous town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own
diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty,--or,
rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester,
Liverpool, or Birmingham,--smokier than all England besides, unless
Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis,
shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length,
quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill.

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more
picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern
verge of Sherwood Forest,--not consisting, however, of thousand-year oaks,
extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations,
which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them
much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this
neighborhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of
foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around
us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire; and shortly
after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers,
though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them.
But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making
us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in.

At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in
Lincoln,) but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the
driver recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither
accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough;
though, like the hotels of most old English towns, it had a musty
fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London
church where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an
ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior court-yard being through
an arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. Ther