And everywhere there
are old houses that appear to have been adapted from the monkish
residences, or from their spacious offices, and made into convenient
dwellings for ecclesiastics, or vergers, or great or small people
connected with the cathedral; and with all modern comfort they still
retain much of the quaintness of the olden time,--arches, even rows of
arcades, pillars, walls, beautified with patches of Gothic sculpture, not
wilfully put on by modern taste, but lingering from a long past; deep
niches, let into the fronts of houses, and occupied by images of saints;
a growth of ivy, overspreading walls, and just allowing the windows to
peep through,--so that no novelty, nor anything of our hard, ugly, and
actual life comes into these limits, through the defences of the gateway,
without being mollified and modified. Except in some of the old colleges
of Oxford, I have not seen any other place that impressed me in this way;
and the grounds of Peterborough Cathedral have the advantage over even
the Oxford colleges, insomuch that the life is here domestic,--that of
the family, that of the affections,--a natural life, which one deludes
himself with imagining may be made into something sweeter and purer in
this beautiful spot than anywhere else. Doubtless the inhabitants find
it a stupid and tiresome place enough, and get morbid and sulky, and
heavy and obtuse of head and heart, with the monotony of their life. But
still I must needs believe that a man with a full mind, and objects to
employ his affection, ought to be very happy here.
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