HERE is an indefinable charm about true greatness that associates itself even with the inanimate objects by which it was surrounded in life. Hence we make pilgrimages to the homes and haunts and tombs of those who have gone before us, and have left enduring monuments of their undying mental powers for our behoof, gratification, or improvement. There is no more touching homage paid to genius than this desire to recall its existence, as well as the imagination can do it when assisted by such mementoes. Many weary miles have been travelled for this gratification; and that it is a great one few

can doubt, who have visited in a loving spirit the birth-place or grave of a Shakspere or a Raffaelle. But minor men share in a minor degree this art-worship, and few Englishmen will fail to take an interest in the memorials that the time-honoured city of York afford of our English Titian-William Etty.

Etty published some years ago in the Art-Journal a charming piece of autobiography, having all the simplicity and freshness that such biography only retains. He notes there his great regard for his native city. He says

"Like my favourite hero, Robinson Crusoe, I was born in the city of York-so he says, so say I; only he was born in 1632, I in 1787, March 10, of an honest and industrious family. Like Rembrandt and Constable, my father also was a miller, and his mill was standing, till this year, on the old York road to London, about half a mile from York. My first panels on which I drew were the boards of my father's shop-floor, my first crayon a farthing's worth of white chalk."

This he wrote in the house depicted in our engraving. During all his wanderings his heart was in Yorkshire, and he went back to live and die in the historic city he loved so well.

It truly deserves the name of an historic city, inasmuch as the records of York carry us back to the earliest period of our authentic history—the written history of the Roman Invasion. When Suetonius Paulinus had the command of the Britannic army of occupation at the begining of the reign of Nero, the ninth legion of troops was stationed at York. This legion, in accordance with the policy of the Roman government, was composed of Spaniards, for it was

considered wisest to have no native soldiers in the cohort placed in a conquered province. It is most interesting to see in the York Museum the simple tombs, constructed of tiles, and laid over the bodies of some of these soldiers by their companions. The ashes of the deceased soldier had been placed in its urn, and over them tiles were laid, edge to edge, like the sloping of a house, and each tile has been stamped with the title of this cohort thus-LEG. IX. HISP.-for Legio nona Hispanica. The same Museum contains the records of many Romans who died in the old city. Among them is the stone sarcophagus of Theodorianus, who died there at the age of thirty, and who is stated, in the inscription upon it, to have been a native of Nomentum, a small city of ancient Latium. Agricola rested here with his victorious army, which had subjugated the whole of the rebellious tribes of Britain in one summer's campaign. Severus again marched through the land, and died at York, A.D. 210, worn out by anxiety, fatigue, and disease. At the early part of the succeeding century, Constantine Chlorus fixed his residence at York, and also died there; but the greatest event enacted here in connection with the old masters of the world, was the proclamation of Constantine the Great, as Emperor, by the army at York, where he was at the time of his father's death, A.D. 306, and where he is said by some to have been born. He did not, however, assume the purple in Britain, but at Trèves, where the remains of his palace are still extant, A.D. 308, having, nevertheless, been acknowledged as Cæsar in Britain by the Emperor Maximinus. Altogether, no city in England possesses more attraction for the scholar and the antiquary

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than the ancient city of York, which is still surrounded by its medieval walls, with their gates and barbicans, indicative of a state of warfare long gone by. Etty might well be proud of his native city.

The visitor to York who would desire a ready clue through its labyrinthine streets to the retired nook where the last home of Etty still stands, should pass the ferry from the railway station, and take the road opposite the gate of the Museum gardens; it leads direct to Coney Street: a short distance down this street there stands, on the right hand, the Church of St. Martin, a decorative piece of architecture, to which the attention is at once directed by one of those projecting clocks, a reigning favourite with our great-grandfathers. This is supported by massive ironwork, formed into foliage and flowers, and possessing more claim to attention on the score of artistic excellence than is usual in such works. It is surmounted by a quaint figure of a naval officer, in the costume of Queen Anne's era, using an astrolabe. Turning into the small square which is beside this church, we see in front a cottage residence, with heavy carved door, solid window frames, and a deeply-pitched roof. It may have been the parsonage house at one period; it seems fitted for the Dr. Primrose of Goldsmith's immortal story. It is, however, the house in which Etty lived and died. Shortly before his death he had attended the funeral of a friend in the churchyard of St. Olave, and he then desired to be buried in that spot provided he died in York; both events happened, and we will retrace our steps to visit the last resting-place of the painter: few lie in a more picturesque locality.