It is very beautiful; there seems to be nothing better than
to say this over again. We found the doors most hospitably open, and
every part entirely free to us,--a kindness and liberality which we have
nowhere else experienced in England, whether as regards cathedrals or any
other public buildings. My wife sat down to draw the font, and I walked
through the Lady Chapel meanwhile, pausing over the empty bed of Queen
Mary, and the grave of Queen Catharine, and looking at the rich and
sumptuous roof, where a fountain, as it were, of groins of arches spouts
from numberless pilasters, intersecting one another in glorious
intricacy. Under the central tower, opening to either transept, to the
nave, and to the choir, are four majestic arches, which I think must
equal in height those of which I saw the ruins, and one, all but perfect,
at Furness Abbey. They are about eighty feet high.
I may as well give up Peterborough here, though I hate to leave it
undescribed even to the tufts of yellow flowers, which grow on the
projections high out of reach, where the winds have sown their seeds in
soil made by the aged decay of the edifice. I could write a page, too,
about the rooks or jackdaws that flit and clamor about the pinnacles, and
dart in and out of the eyelet-holes, the piercings,--whatever they are
called,--in the turrets and buttresses. On our way back to the hotel,
J----- saw an advertisement of some knights in armor that were to tilt
to-day; so he and I waited, and by and by a procession appeared, passing
through the antique market-place, and in front of the abbey gateway,
which might have befitted the same spot three hundred years ago.
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