IV

But I recouped myself, as they say in England, by stopping afterwards at

Chichester. In this dense and various old England two places may be very

near together and yet strike a very different note. I knew in a general

way that there was a cathedral at Chichester; indeed, I had seen its

beautiful spire from the window of the train. I had always regarded an

afternoon in a little cathedral-town as a high order of entertainment,

and a morning at Portsmouth had left me in the mood for not missing such

an exhibition. The spire of Chichester at a little distance greatly

resembles that of Salisbury. It is on a smaller scale, but it tapers

upward with a delicate slimness which, like that of its famous rival,

makes a picture of the level landscape in which it stands. Unlike the

spire of Salisbury, however, it has not at present the charm of

antiquity. A few years ago the old steeple collapsed and tumbled into

the church, and the present structure is but a modern facsimile. The

cathedral is not of the highest interest; it is rather plain and bare,

and, except a curious old detached bell-tower which stands beside it,

has no particular element of unexpectedness. But an English cathedral of

restricted grandeur may yet be a very charming affair; and I spent an

hour or so lounging around this highly respectable edifice, without the

spell of contemplation being broken by satiety. I approached it, from

the station, by the usual quiet red-brick street of the usual cathedral

town--a street of small, excellent shops, before which, here and there,

one of the vehicles of the neighbouring gentry was drawn up beside the

curbstone, while the grocer or the bookseller, who had hurried out

obsequiously, was waiting upon the comfortable occupant. I went into a

bookseller's to buy a Chichester guide, which I perceived in the window;

I found the shopkeeper talking to a young curate in a soft hat. The

guide seemed very desirable, though it appeared to have been but

scantily desired; it had been published in the year 1841, and a very

large remnant of the edition, with a muslin back and a little white

label and paper-covered boards, was piled up on the counter. It was

dedicated, with terrible humility, to the Duke of Richmond, and

ornamented with primitive woodcuts and steel plates; the ink had turned

brown and the page musty; and the style itself--that of a provincial

antiquary of upwards of forty years ago penetrated with the grandeur of

the aristocracy--had grown rather sallow and stale. Nothing could have

been more mellifluous and urbane than the young curate: he was arranging

to have the _Times_ newspaper sent him every morning for perusal. "So it

will be a penny if it is fetched away at noon?" he said, smiling very

sweetly and with the most gentlemanly voice possible; "and it will be

three halfpence if it is fetched away at four o'clock?" At the top of

the street, into which, with my guide-book, I relapsed, was an old

market-cross, of the fifteenth century--a florid, romantic little

structure. It consists of a stone pavilion, with open sides and a number

of pinnacles and crockets and buttresses, besides a goodly medallion of

the high-nosed visage of Charles I., which was placed above one of the

arches, at the Restoration, in compensation for the violent havoc

wrought upon the little town by the Parliamentary soldiers, who had

wrested the place from the Royalists, and who amused themselves, in

their grim fashion, with infinite hacking and hewing in the cathedral.

Here, to the left, the cathedral discloses itself, lifting its smart

gray steeple out of a pleasant garden. Opposite to the garden was the

Dolphin or the Dragon--in fine, the most eligible inn. I must confess

that for a time it divided my attention with the cathedral, in virtue of

an ancient, musty parlour on the second floor, with hunting-pictures

hung above haircloth sofas; of a red-faced waiter, in evening dress; of

a big round of cold beef and a tankard of ale. The prettiest thing at

Chichester is a charming little three-sided cloister, attached to the

cathedral, where, as is usual in such places, you may sit upon a

gravestone amid the deep grass in the middle, and measure the great

central mass of the church--the large gray sides, the high foundations

of the spire, the parting of the nave and transept. From this point the

greatness of a cathedral seems more complex and impressive. You watch

the big shadows slowly change their relations; you listen to the cawing

of rooks and the twittering of swallows; you hear a slow footstep

echoing in the cloisters.

V

If Oxford were not the finest thing in England, Cambridge would

certainly be. Cambridge was so, for that matter, to my imagination, for

thirty-six hours. To the barbaric mind, ambitious of culture, Oxford is

the usual image of the happy reconciliation between research and

acceptance. It typifies, to an American, the union of science and

sense--of aspiration and ease. A German university gives a greater

impression of science, and an English country-house or an Italian villa

a greater impression of idle enjoyment; but in these cases, on one side,

knowledge is too rugged, and, on the other, satisfaction is too trivial.

Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure. When I say

Oxford, I mean Cambridge, for a barbarian is not in the least obliged to

know the difference, and it suddenly strikes me as being both very

pedantic and very good-natured in him to pretend to know it. What

institution is more majestic than Trinity College? what can be more

touching to an American than the hospitality of such an institution? The

first quadrangle is of immense extent, and the buildings that surround

it, with their long, rich fronts of time-deepened gray, are the

stateliest in the world. In the centre of the court are two or three

acres of close-shaven lawn, in the midst of which rises a splendid

gothic fountain, where the serving-men fill up their buckets. There are

towers and battlements and statues, and besides these things there are

cloisters and gardens and bridges. There are charming rooms in a kind of

stately gate-tower, and the rooms, occupying the thickness of the

building, have windows looking out on one side over the magnificent

quadrangle, with half a mile or so of Decorated architecture, and on the

other into deep-bosomed trees. And in the rooms is the best company

conceivable--distinguished men who are remarkably good fellows. I spent

a beautiful Sunday morning walking about Cambridge, with one of these

gentlemen, and attempting, as the French say, to _débrouiller_ its

charms. These are a very complicated affair, and I do not pretend, in

memory, to keep the colleges apart. There are, however, half a dozen

points that make ineffaceable pictures. Six or eight of the colleges

stand in a row, turning their backs to the river; and hereupon ensues

the loveliest confusion of gothic windows and ancient trees, of grassy

banks and mossy balustrades, of sun-chequered avenues and groves, of

lawns and gardens and terraces, of single-arched bridges spanning the

little stream, which is small and shallow, and looks as if it had been

"turned on" for ornamental purposes. The scantily-flowing Cam appears to

exist simply as an occasion for these enchanting little bridges--the

beautiful covered gallery of John's or the slightly-collapsing arch of

Clare. In the way of college-courts and quiet scholastic porticoes, of

gray-walled gardens and ivied nooks of study, in all the pictorial

accidents of a great English university, Cambridge is delightfully and

inexhaustibly rich. I looked at these one by one, and said to myself

always that the last was the best. If I were called upon, however, to

mention the prettiest corner of the world, I should heave a tender sigh

and point the way to the garden of Trinity Hall. My companion, who was

very competent to judge (but who spoke, indeed, with the partiality of a

son of the house), declared, as he ushered me into it, that it was, to

his mind, the most beautiful _small_ garden in Europe. I freely

accepted, and I promptly repeat, an affirmation so ingeniously

conditioned. The little garden at Trinity Hall is narrow and crooked; it

leans upon the river, from which a low parapet, all muffled in ivy,

divides it; it has an ancient wall, adorned with a thousand matted

creepers on one side, and on the other a group of extraordinary

horse-chestnuts. These trees are of prodigious size; they occupy half

the garden, and they are remarkable for the fact that their giant limbs

strike down into the earth, take root again, and emulate, as they rise,

the majesty of the parent tree. The manner in which this magnificent

group of horse-chestnuts sprawls about over the grass, out into the

middle of the lawn, is one of the most picturesque features of the

garden of Trinity Hall. Of course the single object at Cambridge that

makes the most abiding impression is the famous chapel of King's

College--the most beautiful chapel in England. The effect it attempts to

produce within belongs to the order of sublimity. The attempt succeeds,

and the success is attained by means so light and elegant that at first

it almost defeats itself. The sublime usually has more of a frown and

straddle, and it is not until after you have looked about you for ten

minutes that you perceive that the chapel is saved from being the

prettiest church in England by the accident of its being one of the

noblest. It is a cathedral without aisles or columns or transepts, but

(as a compensation) with such a beautiful slimness of clustered tracery

soaring along the walls, and spreading, bending and commingling in the

roof, that its simplicity seems only a richness the more. I stood there

for a quarter of an hour on a Sunday morning; there was no service, but

in the choir behind the great screen which divides the chapel in half,

the young choristers were rehearsing for the afternoon. The beautiful

boy-voices rose together and touched the splendid vault; they hung

there, expanding and resounding, and then, like a rocket that spends

itself, they faded and melted toward the end of the building. The sound

was angelic.