June 17th.--Yesterday morning, June 16th, S-----, Mrs. ------, and I took
the rail for Salisbury, where we duly arrived without any accident or
anything noticeable, except the usual verdure and richness of an English
summer landscape. From the railway station we walked up into Salisbury,
with the tall spire (four hundred feet high) of the cathedral before our
eyes. Salisbury is an antique city, but with streets more regular than I
have seen in most old towns, and the houses have a more picturesque
aspect than those of Oxford, for instance, where almost all are
mean-looking alike,--though I could hardly judge of Oxford on that hot,
weary day. Through one or more of the streets there runs a swift, clear
little stream, which, being close to the pavement, and bordered with
stone, may be called, I suppose, a kennel, though possessing the
transparent purity of a rustic rivulet. It is a brook in city garb. We
passed under the pointed arch of a gateway, which stands in one of the
principal streets, and soon came in front of
THE CATHEDRAL.
I do not remember any cathedral with so fine a site as this, rising up
out of the centre of a beautiful green, extensive enough to show its full
proportions, relieved and insulated from all other patchwork and
impertinence of rusty edifices. It is of gray stone, and looks as
perfect as when just finished, and with the perfection, too, that could
not have come in less than six centuries of venerableness, with a view to
which these edifices seem to have been built.
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