ns of the "Old
City" we should find a place for the manifold ecclesiastical structures
still surviving the downfall of "superstition," and retaining their
legitimate right, as houses of worship. To do justice to the antiquities
or beauties that abound among them is a task beyond our powers, or the
limit of such a work as this; their traceries, their curiously cut flint
work, old carvings, rood lofts, chambers of sanctuary within, and
heaped-up grave-yards without, verily burying the pathways of the
streets, they line in such close succession--their monuments and
epitaphs, quaint, grim, chaste, and uncouth; their steeples, spires, and
towers, round, square, buttressed and bare--their bells musical and
grand, cracked and jangling--their roofs slated, tiled, leaded, patched,
perfect, or crumbling--their names and saintships a labyrinth of mystery
in themselves--would it not fill a volume alone to chronicle even their
leading features, to say nought of the changes they have undergone, the
barter among goods and chattels, the chopping and changing, and massacres
in the painted glass departments,--part of an Abraham and his ass left in
a St. Andrews, the other portions transported to the windows of St.
Stephens; of the ghostly outlines left of old brasses torn up and melted
down by Puritan soldiers and coppersmiths--or the legends that hang about
their shrines and mutilated images? We dare not venture upon the
well-beaten track of archaeologians, topographers, and tourists; our
glance must be cursory and superficial, content to ascertain by its
sweeping survey that treasures of knowledge and stores of information
await the patient and diligent investigations of more learned and
scientific enquirers.

A visit to St. Stephens rewards the archaeologist by a sight of a few old
stalls and a font of early date, while the historian associates with it
the memory of the celebrated Parker, second Archbishop of Canterbury, who
was a native of Norwich, and some say of this parish, but at any rate was
singing pupil of the priest and clerk of this church. Parker's life
occupies an important position in history. The son of "a calenderer of
stuffs," in this city, he was at a very early age left fatherless, and
dependent upon a mother's guidance and direction for his education. Her
superintending care provided him with a variety of masters for the
several branches of learning--reading, writing, singing, and
grammar--each being acquired u