And perhaps the forms
and appliances of human life are never fit to make people happy until
they cease to be used for the purposes for which they were directly
intended, and are taken, as it were, in a sidelong application. I mean
that the monks, probably, never enjoyed their own edifices while they
were a part of the actual life of the day, so much as these present
inhabitants now enjoy them when a new use has grown up apart from the
original one.
Towards noon we all walked into the town again, and on our way went into
the old church with the projecting portal, which I mentioned yesterday.
A woman came hastening with the keys when she saw us looking up at the
door. The interior had an exceeding musty odor, and was very ancient,
with side aisles opening by a row of pointed arches into the nave, and a
gallery of wood on each side, and built across the two rows of arches.
It was paved with tombstones, and I suppose the dead people contributed
to the musty odor. Very naked and unadorned it was, except with a few
mural monuments of no great interest. We stayed but a little while, and
amply rewarded the poor woman with a sixpence. Thence we proceeded to
the cathedral, pausing by the way to look at the old Guildhall, which is
no longer a Guildhall, but a butter-market; and then we bought some
prints of exterior and interior views of the Minster, of which there are
a great variety on note-paper, letter-sheets, large engravings, and
lithographs.
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