The Cordova daily times., 1920-05-12


 z when the sun' at last after many weeks of retirement,
 has shown his golden face above the eastward downs, any city even so fair a city as Winchester seems for the moment, undesirable. One seeks instinctively a wider sky space, hills and meadows, and the flow of the new-falIen waters for company. These are in the valley of the Itchen, writes a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.
 Through the cathedral close the way lies, down the avenue, past the western door and out before the spaces of emerald lawn, above which towers this majestic pile, within whose walls, and around them, are memOried so much of England's history, from great Alfred and Chanute, past William of Wykeham and Wolsey, to the mod ern men of learning and lawn sleeves.
 Beautifully harmonious are the sur- roundings, both in line and colOr-sOft grays of full round Norman arches, vivid greens of cl0ister-garth, blending with the darker tintS of immemOrial yews, and the golden sheen of lichens upon gnarled tree-trunks. Here are rich reds and browns, upon the tiled cOpings of messy walls, on barge boards of ancient gabled roofs and in the delicate rose-pink network of in- terlacing twigs, through which the cathedral town is seen. Thus, among ever-changtng charms, you twist and turn, now round 8 corner, beneath the shadow of an arch, now out again into the full sunlight, before another bend leads you once more through the pleas ant gloom of the eastern gate.
 Beside Wykeham's college, modestly fronting the road, is little humble, buff-colored building, with an Oriel window, and legend reminding us that here Jane Austen lived her later days. Her house, among so many sur rounding grandeurs, wears-as I SUD- pose the writer herself wore-an air of shy timidity, not without grace in these, sometimes, too blatant days.
 Here are Wykehamists, fresh-faced, in straw hats, symbolizing a coming summer, and here, past the gray ruins of Wolsey castle-where Mary of England, before her marriage, feted her Spanish husband-to-be-are the fresh green Water-meadows of the Itchen. and beyond, clear-cut against the skyline, the tree-crested ridge of St. Catherine's hill, with memories of King Charles II and of the colleges 'Dulce DOmum."
 The Waters Splash and Bubble.
 On either side the meadow path the waters splash and bubble, swish and eddy. with a music most melodiOuS and meaningful, even to those un- learned in fish lore. Gray gulls hover, mirrored in the shining surface, and finger over it, so as to set one won dering what lure it was that led them from their open sea into this inland Hampshire valley. Down below, above a sandy bed, the forest of fern like water weeds bends to the current, and the minnoWs-or the minnOw-kind dart and play about it's glades. Right ahead there is age-long majesty agaln-the gabled roofs and lowered church of the Hospital of St. Cross, embOWered in ancestral elms Here l sit, upon a white stile, to enjoy a fleet ing glimpse of a thatched roof, and watch, across the sliding water mir TOT, the fringe of pink feathery Sgrasses nodding and quivering to the breeze.
 | l am tempted almost to go into the hospital, and demand the "Wayfarer's Dole"-not that I want the dole which, moreover, is meager during these days-but that it is pleasant to partake of a charity practiced for so many centuries by the brethren in red and black Some say-I hardly know with what truth-that St. Cross is the hospital in which Anthony TrolIope placed "The Warden of the novel so named, and of "Barchester Towers" TroIlope in his autobiography names Salisbury, not WintOn, as the city in which he first conceived the story of that gentle priest; but, Barsetshire USIuS COulltS OA hIo ONh IAAl1 Ss he may well have conjured little with English topography. And, think. ing of Trollope-while my eyes finger upon the crocus-gemmed lawns of St Cross, and the orange-budded chestnut twigs shiny with flowing sap-how many others, famous in literature have trod these velvet paths, and those of the hills on either hand
 A Goodly Five.
 sOld John of Gaunt, time-honoree Lancaster" perhaps, from his place al 1