the exterior wall of this great church everywhere there were empty where statues had been thrown down and here and there a statue still lingered in its and over the chief entrance and extending across the whole breadth of the building was a row of angels personages and kings in stone being much by the moist english atmosphere during four or five hundred that they had stood there these and majestic figures put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image a child has been holding it in his mouth the venerable infant time has evidently found them sweet inside of the there is a long and of the same height and side and dim of where in catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated of saints in the audacity of my ignorance as i humbly acknowledge it to have been i this great interior as too much broken into and of half its old home by the of a screen the and it did not spread itself in breadth ascended to the roof in lofty one large body ci might have knelt down in the others in each of the and smaller ones in the side besides an indefinite of in the beyond the screen thus it seemed to t the of rather than the world wide hospitality of religion i had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast these with their arches overhead supported by clustered pillars in long up and down were venerable and magnificent but included too much of the twilight of that gloom out of which they grew it is no matter whether i ever came to a more appreciation of this kind of architecture the only value of my being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in the wrong mood and the absurdity of a new pretending to hold any opinion whatever on such subjects instead of himself to the old s influence with simplicity a great deal of white marble the old stone work of the in the shape of and most of these are of people distinguished especially the and of the cathedral with their relatives and families and i found but two monuments of personages whom i had ever heard of � one being and the other lady mary a literary acquaintance of my boyhood it was really pleasant to meet her there for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her it adds a rich charm to sacred this time honoured custom of burial in churches after a few years at least when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pavement and the quaint devices and still speak to you above the statues that stood or in several recesses of the cathedral had and a kind of life and i regarded them with an odd sort of deference as if they were privileged of the it was singular too how the memorial of the latest buried person the man whose features were familiar in the streets of only yesterday seemed precisely as much at home as his he belonged to the cathedral like one of its original pillars this impression in my fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact the dying melt into the great multitude of the departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean and it may be are conscious of no with their new circumstances but immediately become aware of an strangeness in the world which they have quitted death has not taken them away but brought them home the and of affairs however have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants for i saw the upper fragment of a lady in a very old fashioned garb the lower half of whom had doubtless been by s soldiers when they took the hj storm and there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her ever since the outrage as for centuries before with a countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in prayer a depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb another piece of apparently a favourite subject in the middle ages for i have seen several like it in other was a skeleton as representing an open of bones as could well be expected in a solid block of marble and at a period moreover when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than revealed whatever the defects of its production the old had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure how much mischief has been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom of the imagination flinging itself like a death scented pall over our of the future state our hopes hiding our sky and dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is most opposite to it � the grave i old home the cathedral service is performed twice every day at ten o clock and at four when i first entered the young and old but mostly i think boys with voices j sweet and clear and as fresh as bird notes were winding up their harmonious labours and soon came through a side door from the into the they were all dressed in long white robes and looked like a peculiar order of beings created on purpose to between the roof and pavement of that dim consecrated edifice and it with divine themselves meanwhile on the heavy grandeur of the organ tones like on a golden cloud all at once however one of the multitude pulled off his white gown thus himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth of the day in modem frock coat and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut this absurd little incident i verily believe had a sinister effect in putting me at odds 