tended to be looked at from any point of view in that
straight line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong side
of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths
were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted
themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy
of the country ; and, furthermore, every object within
view of them had some subtile reference to their curves
and undulations : but the line of a railway is perfectly
artificial, and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-
sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there
is seldom anything worth seeing within the scope of a
railway traveller's eye ; and if there were, it requires an
alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations (it was near a village of ancient
aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire
moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to
have just alighted from the train. She caught my
attention by a singular movement of the head, not once
only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals,
as if she were making a stern and solemn protest
against some action that developed itself before her
eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should



128 OUR OLD HOME

be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than
a paralytic or nervous affection ; yet one might fancy
that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpe-
trated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman's pres-
ence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved
still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness,
which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort
to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counter-
act the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow,
regular, and inexorable character of the motion her
look of force and self-control, which had the appear-
ance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fate-
ful have stamped this poor lady's face and gesture
into my memory ; so that, some dark day or other, I am
afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the
tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield
station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town
of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its
own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely
vague and misty, or, rather, smoky : for Sheffield
seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or
Birmingham, smokier than all England besides, un-
less Newcastle be the exception. It might have been
Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor ;
and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles
in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a
mountainous hill.

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer,
gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw
what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sher-
wood Forest, not consisting, however, of thousand-
year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of
young and thriving plantations, which will require a
century or two of slow English growth to give them
much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property
lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was
hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off.
Farther onward the country grew quite level around us,



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 129

whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire ;
and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse
of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely
huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But,
as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert it-
self, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our
receptivity could take in.

At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an
unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus be-
longing to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recom-
mended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither
accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked com-
fortable enough ; though, like the hotels of most old
English towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity,
such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church
where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The
house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its
interior court-yard being through an arch, in the side
of which is the door of the hotel. There are long cor-
ridors, an intricate arrangement of passages, and an up-
and-down meandering of staircases, amid which it would
be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who
had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still
seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his generation
were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the
confusion of mind that seizes upon a stranger in the
bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English
inn.

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln,
and within a very short distance of one of the ancient
city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with
a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the
whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc-
ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the
Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many
antique peculiarities; though, unquestionably, English
domestic architecture has lost its most impressive fea-
tures, in the course of the last century. In this respect,
there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, for in-
stance, and Shrewsbury, which last is unusually rich



i 3 o OUR OLD HOME

in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of
the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a provin-
cial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there
is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hid-
ing houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the
picturesque antiquity of the street.

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad
daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay
a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral.
Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close
by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper
and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be
the steepest street I ever climbed, so steep that any
carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much
faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being al-
most the only hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seem
disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each
side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a
stone portal and carved ornaments, which is now a
dwelling-place for poverty stricken people, but may
have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the
Norman kings, to whom its style of architecture dates
back. This is called the Jewess's House, having been
inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged
six hundred years ago.

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer-
tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to
be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost
angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiasti-
cal duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and
was probably performed as such, and groaned over
accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on the day
of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend the hill
barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by
looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him
for the humility of his approach. We, likewise, were
beckoned onward by glimpses of the Cathedral towers,
and, finally, attaining an open square on the summit,
we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and
another to the right. The latter had apparently been



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 131

a part of the exterior defences of the Cathedral, at a
time when the edifice was fortified. The west front
rose behind. We passed through one of the side-arches
of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves in the Cathe-
dral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Min-
ster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient
structures that surround it, all of which, in former days,
were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers.
Some of them are still occupied as such, though others
are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to seem
worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it be
Salisbury Close, however, (which is incomparably rich
as regards the old residences that belong to it,) I re-
member no more comfortably picturesque precincts
round any other cathedral. But, in truth, almost every
cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest,
cosiest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and
most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfish-
ness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delight-
ful, to combine all this with the service of the temple !

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone,
which appears either to have been largely restored, or
else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that
gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient
churches and castles in England. In many parts, the
recent restorations are quite evident ; but other, and
much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched
for centuries : for there are still the gargoyles, perfect,
or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing
that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which
no modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable
niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and
around the entrance, and all over the walls : most of
them empty, but a few containing the lamentable rem-
nants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what
a native animosity lives in the human heart against
carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent
Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men
seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads !
In spite of ail dilapidations, however, the effect of the



i 3 2 OUR OLD HOME

west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, be-
ing covered from massive base to airy summit with the
minutest details of sculpture and carving : at least, it
was so once ; and even now the spiritual impression of
its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice
to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen
a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely
that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor ; and
this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in
a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the
result is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and
all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest
details.

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front,
came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to in-
quire if we wished to go into the Cathedral; but as there
would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like
the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we declined
for the present. So we merely walked round the ex-
terior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York ;
though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majestic
and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description,
or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice in-
spires. It does not impress the beholder as an inani-
mate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet,
long-enduring life of its own, a creation which man
did not build, though in some way or other it is con-
nected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short,
I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to ex-
press my inner sense of this and other cathedrals.

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the
Minster, the clock chimed the quarters ; and then Great
Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight
o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I
ever heard from any bell, slow, and solemn, and allow-
ing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die
away before the next one fell. It was still broad day-
light in that upper region of the town, and would be so
for some time longer ; but the evening atmosphere was
getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 133

steep street, our younger companion running before
us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected
him to break his head against some projecting wall.

In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for an
exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to the Min-
ster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one
we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west
front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger;
but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young
girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is
needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast
nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great
central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a
professedly architectural description, there is but one set
of phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in Eng-
land, and elsewhere. They are alike in their great fea-
tures : an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement;
rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a
dusky height; great windows, sometimes richly be-
dimmed with ancient or modern stained glass ; and an
elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel,
breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious
length, and which is further choked up by a massive
organ, in spite of which obstructions, you catch the
broad, variegated glimmer of the painted east window,
where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfigura-
tion. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of
the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the
pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the
Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of
chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which
have now lost their individual consecration,) nor the old
monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in the side-
aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main
body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, which, here
at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported by one central
pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches
like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chap-
ter-House are the cloisters, extending round a quad-
rangle, and paved with lettered tombstones, the more



i 34 OUR OLD HOME

antique of which have had their inscriptions half obliter-
ated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise
in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some
of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses
engraved upon them, have been made to serve as me-
morials to dead people of very recent date.

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops
and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purport-
ing to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, wife
of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the little
Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have
been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral
is not particularly rich in monuments ; for it suffered
grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reforma-
tion and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is
in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of
most of the old churches which I have visited. His sol-
diers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathe-
dral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures,
and the ancestral memorials of great families, quite at
their wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there
are some most exquisite and marvellous specimens of
flowers, foliage, and grape-vines, and miracles of stone-
work twined about arches, as if the material had been
as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor's hands, the
leaves being represented with all their veins, so that
you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which he
sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those
grotesque faces which always grin at you from the pro-
jections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had
gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded
such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in some-
thing ineffably absurd.

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great
edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to
the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to
think that the artists would have taken these further
pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor
in working out their conceptions to the extremest point.
But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 135

smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest
hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a
bitter reckoning to undergo.

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which
the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick build-
ing, with a locked door. Our guide, I forgot to say
that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and
with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, our
guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps.
At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to
be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting,
which might originally have been painted of a rather
gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pave-
ment, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt
clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not
been meddled with, further than by removing the super-
incumbent earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded
about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw
a place where the stone pavement had been worn away
by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they
knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin.

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of
more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen,
bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which
were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Ro-
man arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification,
and has been striding across the English street ever since
the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries be-
fore. The arch is about four hundred yards from the
Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman
remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground,
and doubtless innumerable more beneath it; for, as in
ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil
seems to have swept over what was the surface of that
earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about
is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps
has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the
original depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of
Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as



136 OUR OLD HOME

stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years
ago ; and though Time has gnawed it externally, he has
made what amends he could by crowning its rough and
broken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts
of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the
sides.

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the
Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ;
but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of
wood, and we were denied admittance because some
part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now
rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, be-
sides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some
stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little
hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of the
present day has subsided into the lower town, and that
only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these
upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of
the castle-wall are clustered whole colonies of small
houses, some of brick, but the larger portion built of
old stones which once made part of the Norman keep,
or of Roman structures that existed before the Con-
queror's castle was ever dreamed about. They are like
toadstools that spring up from the mould of a decaying
tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the
picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in
that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the
castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving
its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and
ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering
plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex-
cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant
and level road bordered with dwellings of various char-
acter. One or two were houses of 'gentility, with de-
lightful and shadowy lawns before them ; many had
those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed
gables, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some
of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and there were
pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 137

hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to
hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In
front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and
relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old
Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's Head; and as
the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a
little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself re-
leased from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it
had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at
rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the
hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now
hovering about the upper height of the great central
tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements
and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath
it. It was the most impressive view that I had had.
The whole lower part of the structure was seen with
perfect distinctness; but at the very summit the mist
was so dense as to form an actual cloud, as well denned
as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and
literally, here was a " cloud-capt tower."

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a
richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever.
The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior
is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Min-
ster; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many
peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinna-
cles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them into the
sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angu-
lar in its general effect ; but in this at Lincoln there is a
continual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you
are aware of a change, and a disclosure of something
new, yet working an harmonious development of what
you have heretofore seen. The west front is unspeak-
ably grand, and may be read over and over again forever,
and still show undetected meanings, like a great, broad
page of marvellous writing in black-letter, so many
sculptured ornaments there are, blossoming out before
your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since
you looked last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy



138 OUR OLD HOME

canopies beneath which carved images used to be, and
where they will show themselves again, if you gaze long
enough. But I will not say another word about the
Cathedral.

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre
precincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's
"Times," "The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and "The
Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the
weather was, the street beneath our window was en-
livened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all the
evening, because it was Saturday night, and they had
accomplished their week's toil, received their wages, and
were making their small purchases against Sunday, and
enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band
of music passed to and fro several times, with the rain-
drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and
pattering on the bass-drum ; a spirit-shop, opposite the
hotel, had a vast run of custom ; and a coffee-dealer,
in the open air, found occasional vent for his commodity,
in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups.
The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow
and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to
overflowing, and humming with human life.

Observing in the Guide Book that a steamer runs
on the River Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I in-
quired of the waiter, and learned that she was to start
on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an in-
teresting trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary
mode of travel, we determined to make the voyage. The
Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street