It stands in the midst of a small open space,--or a space that looks
small in comparison with the vast bulk of the cathedral. I was not so
much impressed by its exterior as I have usually been by Gothic
buildings; because it is rectangular in its general outline and in its
towers, and seems to lack the complexity and mysterious plan which
perplexes and wonder-strikes me in most cathedrals. Doubtless, however,
if I had known better how to admire it, I should have found it wholly
admirable. At all events, it has a satisfactory hugeness. Seeking my
way in, I at first intruded upon the Registry of Deeds, which occupies a
building patched up against the mighty side of the cathedral, and hardly
discernible, so small the one and so large the other. I finally hit upon
the right door, and I felt no disappointment in my first glance around at
the immensity of enclosed space;--I see now in my mind's eye a dim length
of nave, a breadth in the transepts like a great plain, and such an airy
height beneath the central tower that a worshipper could certainly get a
good way towards heaven without rising above it. I only wish that the
screen, or whatever they call it, between the choir and nave, could be
thrown down, so as to give us leave to take in the whole vastitude at
once. I never could understand why, after building a great church, they
choose to sunder it in halves by this mid-partition. But let me be
thankful for what I got, and especially for the height and massiveness of
the clustered pillars that support the arches on which rests the central
tower. I remember at Furness Abbey I saw two tall pillars supporting a
broken arch, and thought it, the most majestic fragment of architecture
that could possibly be. But these pillars have a nobler height, and
these arches a greater sweep. What nonsense to try to write about a
cathedral!
There is a great, cold bareness and bleakness about the interior; for
there are very few monuments, and those seem chiefly to be of
ecclesiastical people. I saw no armed knights, asleep on the tops of
their tombs; but there was a curious representation of a skeleton, at
full length, under the table-slab of one of the monuments. The walls are
of a grayish hue, not so agreeable as the rich dark tint of the inside of
Westminster Abbey; but a great many of the windows are still filled with
ancient painted glass, the very small squares and pieces of which are
composed into splendid designs of saints and angels, and scenes from
Scripture.
There were a few watery blinks of sunshine out of doors, and whenever
these came through the old painted windows, some of the more vivid colors
were faintly thrown upon the pavement of the cathedral,--very faintly, it
is true; for, in the first place, the sunshine was not brilliant; and
painted glass, too, fades in the course of the ages, perhaps, like all
man's other works. There were two or three windows of modern
manufacture, and far more magnificent, as to brightness of color and
material beauty, than the ancient ones; but yet they looked vulgar,
glaring, and impertinent in comparison, because such revivals or
imitations of a long-disused art cannot have the good faith and
earnestness of the originals. Indeed, in the very coloring, I felt the
same difference as between heart's blood and a scarlet dye. It is a
pity, however, that the old windows cannot be washed, both inside and
out, for now they have the dust of centuries upon them.
The screen or curtain between the nave and choir has eleven carved
figures, at full length, which appeared to represent kings, some of them
wearing crowns, and bearing sceptres or swords. They were in wood, and
wrought by some Gothic hand. These carvings, and the painted windows,
and the few monuments, are all the details that the mind can catch hold
of in the immensity of this cathedral; and I must say that it was a
dreary place on that cold, cloudy day. I doubt whether a cathedral is a
sort of edifice suited to the English climate. The first buildings of
the kind were probably erected by people who had bright and constant
sunshine, and who desired a shadowy awfulness--like that of a forest,
with its arched wood-paths--into which to retire in their religious
moments.
In America, on a hot summer's day, how delightful its cool and solemn
depths would be! The painted windows, too, were evidently contrived, in
the first instance, by persons who saw how effective they would prove
when a vivid sun shone through them. But in England, the interior of a
cathedral, nine days out of ten, is a vast sullenness, and as chill as
death and the tomb. At any rate, it was so to-day, and so thought one of
the old vergers, who kept walking as briskly as he could along the width
of the transepts. There were several of these old men when I first came
in, but they went off, all but this one, before I departed. None of them
said a word to me, nor I to them; and admission to the Minster seems to
be entirely free.
After emerging from this great gloom, I wandered to and fro about York,
and contrived to go astray within no very wide space. If its history be
authentic, it is an exceedingly old city, having been founded about a
thousand years before the Christian era. There used to be a palace of
the Roman emperors here, and the Emperor Severus died here, as did some
of his successors; and Constantine the Great was born here. I know not
what, if any, relics of those earlier times there may be; but York is
still partly surrounded with a wall, and has several gates, which the
city authorities take pains to keep in repair. I grow weary in my
endeavor to find my way back to the railway, and inquired it of one of
the good people of York,--a respectable, courteous, gentlemanly person,--
and he told me to walk along the walls. Then he went on a considerable
distance; but seemed to repent of not doing more for me; so he waited
till I came up, and, walking along by my side, pointed out the castle,
now the jail, and the place of execution, and directed me to the
principal gateway of the city, and instructed me how to reach the ferry.
The path along the wall leads, in one place, through a room over the arch
of a gateway,--a low, thick-walled, stone apartment, where doubtless the
gatekeeper used to lodge, and to parley with those who desired entrance.
I found my way to the ferry over the Ouse, according to this kind
Yorkist's instructions. The ferryman told me that the fee for crossing
was a halfpenny, which seemed so ridiculously small that I offered him
more; but this unparalleled Englishman declined taking anything beyond
his rightful halfpenny. This seems so wonderful to me that I can hardly
trust my own memory.
Reaching the station, I got some dinner, and at four o'clock, just as I
was starting, came Mr. Bowman, my very agreeable and sensible travelling
companion. Our journeying together was ended here; for he was to keep on
to London, and I to return to Liverpool. So we parted, and I took the
rail westward across England, through a very beautiful, and in some
degree picturesque, tract of country, diversified with hills, through the
valleys and vistas of which goes the railroad, with dells diverging from
it on either hand, and streams and arched bridges, and old villages, and
a hundred pleasant English sights. After passing Rochdale, however, the
dreary monotony of Lancashire succeeded this variety. Between nine and
ten o'clock I reached the Tithebarn station in Liverpool. Ever since
until now, May 17th, I have employed my leisure moments in scribbling off
the journal of my tour; but it has greatly lost by not having been
written daily, as the scenes and occurrences were fresh. The most
picturesque points can be seized in no other way, and the hues of the
affair fade as quickly as those of a dying dolphin; or as, according to
Audubon, the plumage of a dead bird.
One thing that struck me as much as anything else in the Highlands I had
forgotten to put down. In our walk at Balloch, along the road within
view of Loch Lomond and the neighboring hills, it was a brilliant
sunshiny afternoon, and I never saw any atmosphere so beautiful as that
among the mountains. It was a clear, transparent, ethereal blue, as
distinct as a vapor, and yet by no means vaporous, but a pure,
crystalline medium. I have witnessed nothing like this among the
Berkshire hills nor elsewhere.
York is full of old churches, some of them very antique in appearance,
the stones weather-worn, their edges rounded by time, blackened, and with
all the tokens of sturdy and age-long decay; and in some of them I
noticed windows quite full of old painted glass, a dreary kind of minute
patchwork, all of one dark and dusty hue, when seen from the outside.
Yet had I seen them from the interior of the church, there doubtless
would have been rich and varied apparitions of saints, with their glories
round their heads, and bright-winged angels, and perhaps even the
Almighty Father himself, so far as conceivable and representable by human
powers. It requires light from heaven to make them visible. If the
church were merely illuminated from the inside,--that is, by what light a
man can get from his own understanding,--the pictures would be invisible,
or wear at best but a miserable aspect.