Ancient_and_modern_York_a_guide

106 ANCIENT AND
Chj Ctto mails an& Haxs.
There is nothing which strikes a stranger, on entering
York, so forcibly, as its embattled walls, and unique and
venerable bars. The moment you behold them, you are
reminded of days long past, and of a state of things which
for centuries has ceased to exist,—" a thousand years their
dusky wings expand !" Those accustomed to the metro
polis, or the open and straggling streets of our populous
towns, are not prepared to see a city girt round with a
fortified wall, and entered by stately bars. York is one
of the few cities in England that possesses such monuments
of the olden time ; on which account its walls are objects of
peculiar interest to the traveller. York was originally
surrounded with walls by the Romans; and the pre
sent walls, in many cases, rest upon Roman foundations.
Drake was of opinion, that Micklegate Bar was a Roman
structure ; and his friend, Lord Burlington, supposed that
the chief arch by the portcullis, which is built of grit, was
a Roman arch. This opinion, however, has been con
troverted. The learned antiquary, Sir Henry Englefield,
—who had made a special examination of the arch, in a
paper read before the society of antiquaries, of London,
1780, contends that it is not a Roman, but either a
Saxon or Anglo-Norman arch. " It is," observes Sir
Henry, " as Mr. Drake says, a true segment of a circle,
and the material is the grit-stone ; but Mr. Drake, like
many men of real genius, warmed with his subject, and
willing to give it every advantage in his power, seems
totally to have forgotten that the Saxon and Norman
buildings are all raised on segments of circles, and many
of them in this country entirely built of grit. Kirkstall
abbey may serve as a proof (if proof was necessary) of
both these assertions. But besides this, Bootham Bar
has an arch almost exactly similar, and built of the same
material ; and I think that one more of the gates ofYork*
• Monk Bar.