The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-06-05 00:00:00

SALISBURY AND Im CATIIYDRAL.

In the celebrated "Lettere from England by Don
limmel Alvarez Erpriella"—a pretended Spaniatd—in
reality Robert Southey, the poet, oocurs the lo lowing
•niu.ing description of Paliabury end its Cathedral,
which Cu referring to Wyatt'. fearful "restoration" of
the eacred lane, may not inaptly contrast with what
the viiritor now beholds in progress in the present re.
atorations under Mr. George Gilbert Scott.
"Our tint stage "mys the pseudo Don wee to the
Episcopal city of Saliabury ; here we left the down
country, and once 1110 re entered upon cultivated fields
and inelmores. The trees in them hedgerows if they
are at all lofty have all their boughs apt to the top;
nothrng can look more nAked or deplorable, when they
grow by the wayside, thin be enjoined by law, becaum
their dropping after min injures the road, end their
aliatle preventu it from drying. The climate has a*
much rain and so little sun that overhanging boughs
leave been bend in like manner injurious to pasture or
arable land,, and the trees everywhere am therefore time
deformed.

"The approach to Salisbury is very delightful; little
rivers or rivulets are Ken in every direction; houses ea•
ten( ing into the country ; garden-trees within the city,
and the spire of the Cathedral overtoppinc all, the
highest and the most beautiful in the whole kirldom.
"We vi.ited this magnificent builditg wbil.t our
dinner w•s getting ready; like all such buildings it has
it. traditional talon of aboirdity and es.ggeration—that
it has as many private chapel. as months in the year,
as many doors as week., as many pillars as days, as
many windows as hours, and.. many partitions in the
WindollB U minutes; they say also, that it is founded
upon wool packs, because nothing else could remit 'the
humiditv of the soil.

"It has lately— undergone or I should rather say
suffered a thorough repair (Wyatt'. restoration?) in the
true spirit of reformation. Everything has been cleared
$0 .7 to give It the appearanee of one huge room. The
little chapels which its plow founder. •nd ben.-
factor, had erected in the hope of exciting piety in
others and profiting by their praying are all 'wept
away! bat you may eaaily conceive what wild work a
protettent architect must make with • Cathedral!
when he fits it to his own notions of architecture with-
out the slightest feeling or knowledge of the design
with which much buillaings were originally erected.
[This of course was written by Southey to keep up his
assumed character. We could almost wish he had
been presnt in the ficsh lest Friday at the Choral I
Festival—he might have written differently on seeing
the cloisters re-peopled with our sarpliced choirs.]
The naked monutnenta are now ranged in rows between
the pillar., one opptolte another, like couples for •
dance, to to never monuments were placed before, and
it is to be hoped ill be placed hereafter. Here
is the tomb of • nobleman who in the reign of our
(Spanith) Philip and Mary wart executed for murder like '
a common malefactor, with this dtfferenee only that he
bad the privilege of being hanged in • silken halter, a
singularity which instead of rendering hi, death less
itnontinious, has made the ignominy more notorious.
The cloi.ters and the chapter-house heal, escaped alien,
tion. I have seen more beautiful cloisters in our own
country but • finer chapter-house ; it is supported
as usual by one central pillar whose top arches off on •Il
sides like the head of a spreading palm. The Bishop'.
palace was bought during the reign of the Presbyterians
by • rich tailor who demolished it, and sold the
materials.

"The cemetery has suffered eves more than the
church, if more be possible, from the abominable sacri-
lege, arid abominable taste of the late bishop atd his
chapter. They bane destroyed all memorials of the
dead, for the sake of laying it down ass em with, well-
shorn grass.plat, garnished with bright yellow gravel
walks! This suits no feeling of Cie mind connected
with religious reverence, with death, or with the hope
of immortality ; indeed, it suits with nothing except
• new point. d window at the altar, of truly English
design (fur England is not the country of the arts [what
say the Bath and West of England to that* and an
organ bedecked with croketied pinnacles more than ever
was gothic tower, and of stone colour, to imitate
masonry! This however, it should be added, was
given in • handsome manner by the king. A subscrip-
tion was raised turortah the diocese to npair the
Cathedra [then, as now] The king having inquired of
the bishop bow it sueoeeded, proceeded to ask why be
himself bad riot been applied to for a conlribution ? The
pi, Into, with eourtly submission. disclaimed such pre-
sumption as highly improper. • I live at Weymouth,'
said the king, 'in yoor diocsse, and thoogh I am not
rich, can afford to give you an organ which I know you
want; so order one in my Dame sod let it be suitable to
so fines Cathedral.

" The wil here abounds no much with water, that
there are no vaults in the churches, nor cellars in the
city ; • spring will sometimes guoh tip while they are
diggins • grove. Little streams o.w through wirers' of
the streets, so that the city has brim called the English
Venice ; but whoever gore it tbia appellation, either
has never seen Venice. or grosaly BAturrd Salisbury.
Indeed, till the resemblance w•s invented thew atreair-
lets were rather thought inoonvenient than beautiful ;
and traveller. complained that they made the streets
not no clean and not so easy of passage as they would
have been otherwise.

'The place is fatuous for the manufactory of knives
and scissors, which are here brought to the greatest
possible perfection.

'Unit a league from Salisbury done on the lit of
the London road is Old Serum, the Sorhiodunem qi the
Romans, lemons for many lowing. It covered the top
of a mend hill which is still surrounded with a mound
of earth and • deep fosse. Under the Norman king. it
we.. diurishing town, br.t 'object to ten evils—the
-ant if water and the oppression of the C•stle sol liers.
The townsmen, therefore, with one consent removed to
New Sarnm, the present Salisbury, where the tint of
ti.eie evils is more than remedied ; end the garri•on
area no longer maintained at Old Sarum when there
was nobody to be pillaged."

We have now done with the Spanish Don; bat may
here mention that Peter Weasels, who was Archdeacon
of London in the year 1160, seemed to prophesy the
removal of the Cathedral, to the vale in these words
"Oh! Sarum is a plsoe esposed to the wind, bsrren,
dry, and solitary; a tower is there, as in !Siloam, by
which the itshab tants have for • long time been
enslaved. The Church of Strum is • captive on a hill ;
let us therefore, in Gosh. name, go down into the level,
where the valleys will yield plenty of corn, and the
champaign fields are of • rich soil." This was fulfilled
in about sixty years after.