Each was from 20 to 30 feet in length.  The seat was wrought in geraniums of every tint, all grown to an even, compact surface, presenting figures as diversified as the alternating hues could produce.  The back was worked in taller flowers, presenting the same evenness of line and surface.  On entering the garden gate and catching the first sight of these beautiful structures, you take them for veritable sofas, as perfectly wrought as anything was ever done in Berlin wool.

Ripon is an interesting little city, with a fact-roll of history reaching back into the dimmest centuries of the land.  It has run the gauntlet of all the Saxon, Danish, Scotch and Norman raids and regimes.  It was burnt once or twice by each of these races in the struggle for supremacy.  But with a plucky tenacity of life, it arose successively out of its own ashes and spread its phoenix wings to a new and vigorous vitality.  A venerable cathedral looks down upon it with a motherly face.  Unique old buildings, with half their centuries unrecorded and lost in oblivion, stand to this day in good repair, as the homes of happy children, who play at marbles and the last sports of the day just as if they were born in houses only a year older than themselves.  Institutions and customs older than the cathedral are kept up with a filial faith in their virtue.  One of the most interesting of these, I believe, was established by the Saxon Edgar or Alfred—­it matters not which; they were only a century or two apart, and that space is but a trifling circumstance in the history of this old country.  One of these kings appointed an officer called a “wakeman” for the town.  He must originally have been a kind of secular beadle of the community, or a curfew constable, to see the whole population well a-bed in good season.  One of his duties consisted in blowing a horn every night at nine o’clock as a signal to turn in.  But a remarkable consideration was attached to faithful compliance with this summons.  If any house or shop was robbed before sunrise, a tax was levied upon every inhabitant, of 4d. if his house had one outer door, and of 8d. if it had two.  This tax was to compensate the sufferer for his loss, and also to put the whole community under bonds to keep the peace and to feel responsible for the safety of each other’s property.  Thus it not only acted as a great mutual insurance company of which every householder was a member, but it made him, as it were, a special constable against burglary.  This old Saxon institution is in full life and vigor to-day.  The wakeman is still the highest secular official of the town.  For a thousand consecutive years the wakeman’s toot-horn has been blown at night over the successive generations of the little cathedral city.  This is an interesting fact, full of promise.  No American could fail to admire this conservatism who appreciates national individuality.  No one, at heart, could more highly esteem these salient traits of a people’s character.  And here I may as well put in a few thoughts on this subject as at any stage of my walk.