It must be a very
singular institution, and worthy of intimate study, if it were possible
to make one's way within the portal.
After writing the above, J----- and I went out for another ramble before
tea; and, taking a new course, we came to a grated iron fence and
gateway, through which we could see the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. They
are very extensive, and situated quite in the midst of the city, and the
wall and then a tower of the Abbey seem to border more than one of the
streets. Our walk was interesting, as it brought us unexpectedly upon
several relics of antiquity,--a loop-holed and battlemented gateway; and
at various points fragments of the old Gothic stone-work, built in among
more recent edifices, which themselves were old; grimness intermixed with
quaintness and grotesqueness; old fragments of religious or warlike
architecture mingled with queer domestic structures,--the general effect
sombre, sordid, and grimy; but yet with a fascination that makes us fain
to linger about such scenes, and come to them again.
We passed round the cathedral, and saw jackdaws fluttering round the
pinnacles, while the bells chimed the quarters, and little children
played on the steps under the grand arch of the entrance. It is very
stately, very beautiful, this minster; and doubtless would be very
satisfactory, could I only know it long and well enough,--so rich as its
front is, even with almost all the niches empty of their statues; not
stern in its effect, which I suppose must be owing to the elaborate
detail with which its great surface is wrought all over, like the chasing
of a lady's jewel-box, and yet so grand! There is a dwelling-house on
one side, gray with antiquity, which has apparently grown out of it like
an excrescence; and though a good-sized edifice, yet the cathedral is so
large that its vastness is not in the least deformed by it.
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