After looking at the crypt and the cloisters, we returned through the
close and the churchyard, and went back to the hotel through a path by
the river-side. This is the same dim and dusky path through which I
wandered the night before, and in the sunshine it looked quite as
beautiful as I knew it must,-- a shadow of elm-trees clothing the high
bank, and overarching the paths above and below; some of the elms growing
close to the water-side, and flinging up their topmost boughs not nearly
so high as where we stood, and others climbing upward and upward, till
our way wound among their roots; while through the foliage the quiet
river loitered along, with this lovely shade on both its banks, to pass
through the centre of the town. The stately cathedral rose high above
us, and farther onward, in a line with it, the battlemented walls of the
old Norman castle, gray and warlike, though now it has become a
University. This delightful walk terminates at an old bridge in the
heart of the town; and the castle hangs immediately over its busiest
street. On this bridge, last night, in the embrasure, or just over the
pier, where there is a stone seat, I saw some old men seated, smoking
their pipes and chatting. In my judgment, a river flowing through the
centre of a town, and not too broad to make itself familiar, nor too
swift, but idling along, as if it loved better to stay there than to go,
is the pleasantest imaginable piece of scenery; so transient as it is,
and yet enduring,--just the same from life's end to life's end; and this
river Wear, with its sylvan wildness, and yet so sweet and placable, is
the best of all little rivers,--not that it is so very small, but with a
bosom broad enough to be crossed by a three-arched bridge.
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