Half the children of
York seemed to be taking it, too, with their good parents, who
had stayed away from church to give them this pleasure, the
fathers putting on their frock-coats and top-hats, which are worn
on no other days in the provincial cities of England. For a
Plantagenet wall, that of York is in excellent repair, and it is
very clean, so that the children could not spoil their Sunday
best by clambering on the parapet, and trying to fall over it.
There was no parapet on the other side, and they could have
fallen over that without trouble; but it would not have served
the same purpose; for under the parapet there were the most
alluringly ragged little boys, with untidy goats and delightfully
dirty geese. There was no trace of a moat outside the wall, where
pleasant cottages pressed close to it with their gardens full of
bright flowers. At one point there were far-spreading sheep and
cattle pens, where there is a weekly market, and at another the
old Norman castle which cruel Conqueror William built to hold the
city, and which has suffered change, not unpicturesque, into
prisons for unluckier criminals, and the Assize Courts for their
condemnation.
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