upon him the duty of sifting evidence, and searching out causes, of tracing the famous “Kett’s rebellion,” to the deep-seated sense of wrong in the hearts of the people, that found expression in the vague predictions and mystical prophecies of the Merlin of the district.

It is for him to unfold the little germs of after-history, that he treasured up in the kernels of such documents as he order addressed to the county sheriff, to commit to prison those who refused to attend the services of the established church; to trace the growth of the spirit among the people, that opened the city gates to the army of the “Parliament,” fortified its castle against royalist soldiers, and turned its market-place into a place of execution for fellow-citizens, who dared to espouse the cause of their king; to rescue from oblivion the gems that were buried beneath the blows of the zealous puritan’s demolishing hammer; to read in the nailed horseshoes, that surmount the doorways of hundreds of its cottages, as a talisman against witchcraft, the legacy of superstition bequeathed to their descendants by these earnest “abolitionists;” to mark the rise and progress of the unfranchised masses in this age of enlightened liberalism, and the deepening and mellowed tone of the “voice of the people,” as it rises from the

chastened and self-disciplined homes of the educated and thriving artisans.  Upon him too, it devolves, to mark the age and the man—to see the monuments of the great-hearted and liberal-minded of the days gone by, in the hospitals, charities, and endowments, their munificence has showered down, from the heights of prosperity, upon the depths of poverty—to trace the progress of the philanthropist of later times, in his house to house visits, and read statistics of his labours in the renovated homes and gladdened hearts of thousands, thus lifted out from the swamps of misery and crime, by the single hand of Christian benevolence, stretched forth in sympathy; to mark the efforts of legislation to remove causes that evil results may cease, to note the patriotism of honest hearts, that would seek to level, if at all, by lifting up the poor to that standard of moral and physical comfort, beneath which the manhood of human nature has neither liberty nor room to grow; and finally, it is his to cast into the treasury of his nation’s history his gleanings among the bye-ways of a single city, no mean or despicable bundle of facts, with which to enrich its stores.

But we must tarry no longer to generalize with archæologist, poet or historian; we have many storehouses to visit, where associations of religion, poetry, and art, lie garnered up in rich abundance.

CHAPTER II.
the cathedral.

The Cathedral.—Forms.—Symbols.—Early history of the Christian church.—Growth of superstition.—Influence of Paganism.—Government.—Growth of the Papacy.—Monasticism.—St. Macarius.—Benedict.—St. Augustine.—Hildebrand.—Celibacy of the clergy.—Herbert of Losinga, founder of Norwich Cathedral.—Crusades, their influence on Civilization.—Historical memoranda.—Bishop Nix.—Bilney.—Bishop Hall.—Ancient religious festivals.—Easter.—Whitsuntide.—Good Friday.—“Creeping to the Cross.”—Paschal taper.—Legend of St. William.—Holy-rood Day.—Carvings.—Origin of grotesque sculptures.—Old Painting: mode of executing it.—Speculatory.—Cloisters.—Anecdote.—Epitaph.—List of Bishops.—Funeral of Bishop Stanley.

“What is a city?”  “A city contains a cathedral, or Bishop’s see.”

Such being the definition given us in one of those valuable literary productions that we were wont in olden time to call Pinnock’s ninepennies, and which have since been followed by dozens upon dozens of series upon series, written by a host of good souls that have followed in his wake, devoting

themselves to the task of retailing homeopathic doses of concentrated geography, biography, philosophy, astronomy, geology, and all the other phies, nies, onomies, and ologies, that ever perplexed or enlightened the brains of the rising generation; we adopt the term, in memory of those so-called happy days of childhood, when its vague mysticism suggested to our country born and school-bred pates a wide field of speculation for fancy to wander in; a Cathedral and a Bishop’s see being to us, in their unexplained nomenclature, figures of speech as hieroglyphical as any inscription that ever puzzled a Belzoni or a Caviglia to decipher.

We have grown, however, to know something of the meaning of these terms; and having lived to see a few specimens of real cathedrals and live bishops, we are now quite ready to acknowledge the priority of their claims upon our notice when rambling among the lions of an old city.

We say old, but where is the cathedral not old? save and except a few just springing into existence, evidences we would hope of a reaction in the devotional tendencies of our nature, rising up once more through the confused assemblage of churches and chapels, and meeting houses, reared in honour of man’s intellect, sectarian isms; human deity in fact, with its standard freedom of thought, under which the myriad diverse forms of hero worshippers

have rallied themselves, each with their own atom of the broken statue of truth, that they may vainly strive of their own power to re-unite again into a perfect and harmonious whole.  Setting aside, however, these later efforts to regain something of the lofty conceptions that can alone enter into the mind of a worshipper of God, not man, we have to deal with the monuments of a past age yet left among us, witnessing to the early life in the church, though not unmingled with symptoms of disease, and marks of the progress of decay,—marks which are indeed fearfully manifest in the relics existing in our country, that bear almost equal traces of corruption and spiritual growth, each struggling, as it were, for victory.  Is there any one who can walk through the lofty nave of a cathedral, and not feel lifted up to something? may be he knows not what; but the spirit of worship, of adoration, is breathed on him as it were from the structure around him.  And should it not be so? does not the blue vault of heaven, with its unfathomed ocean of suns and worlds, each moving in its own orbit, obeying one common law of order and perfect harmony, call up our reverence for the God of Nature? and has it ever been forbidden that the heart and understanding should be appealed to through the medium of the outward senses, for the worship of the God of Revelation?  Is the eye to be closed, the mouth dumb, the ear deaf, to all save

the intellectual teachings of a fellow man?  Is music the gift of heaven, colour born in heaven’s light, incense the fragrance of the garden, planted by God’s hand, form the clothing of soul and spirit, to be banished from the temple dedicated to the service of that living God, who created the music of the bird, the waterfall, and the thunder, who painted the rainbow in the window of heaven, who scented the earth with sweet flowers, and herbs and “spicy groves,” who gave to each tree,