The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland: / A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

by Thomas W. Silloway; Lee L. Powers

OLD SARUM.

On Friday a. m., at nine o'clock, we took team at Salisbury for this place. Few spots in history are of more interest than this and its neighbor, Stonehenge,—the former two, and the latter a little less than nine miles from Salisbury. Sarum was an important settlement made by the early Britons, which afterwards became a Roman station, and the residence of the West Saxon kings. King Alfred fortified it, and in the eleventh century it was made a bishop's see. In 1217, however, Bishop Poore removed two miles away, and there established what is now Salisbury Cathedral, and so the city itself. As a matter of course, Sarum declined. The people followed the bishop, and what was once a place of note became almost extinct. Only one house remains on the grounds, but there are yet traces of the walls, cathedral, and castle. A more complete ruin is not to be found elsewhere in Great Britain, and a strange enchantment hovers about the scene.

The ride from Salisbury is very pleasant. From the level land on which the new city (though over 660 years old) stands we pass into a very undulating country, a quarter of which is covered with groups of shrubbery and trees. On the greenest of green grass, thousands of sheep and many cows are grazing, but no houses are in sight. A rare beauty exists everywhere, and many evidences of civilization. Salisbury is in our rear. Above all we see the cathedral tower and spire, distinct in outline, like a faithful sentinel standing there and guarding us.

We alight from our team, hitch the horse by the roadside, and turn to our left into a path parallel with the main road, and running a short distance across the field. We walk on along the edge of a grove, and come upon a solitary house, which is the only human habitation at Old Sarum. It is a stone house of moderate size, two stories high, plastered and whitewashed, with a red tiled roof. It is situated back some fifty feet from our path, is well fenced, and surrounded by shade-trees and shrubbery. It has a very English appearance. A sign over the gate informs the traveller that it is a place of transient entertainment. It fronts on the main road, and we are now at the rear entrance. Salisbury itself—or Boston, for a sixpence or a dime—can at a moment's notice furnish better entertainment than can be provided there. Yonder elevated land, in this same field, is our better restaurant. We walk delightedly over the pathway thither. What thoughts take possession of the mind. Here ancient Britons, conquering Romans, and Saxon kings and queens walked a thousand years ago. The same sky bent over them; the same soil was beneath their feet. Odors from flowers and the same balmy atmosphere regaled them. The birds sang to them as they sing to us now.

We approach the venerable enclosure. It is a vast circular enbankment some twenty feet high, with here and there bushes and small trees. The general symmetry suggests the work of human hands, but the abandoned appearance tells of antiquity. Our road leads down over a depression, the old moat,—and then up again, and in through an opening, on both sides of which is ragged masonry of flint, cobble-stones, and white mortar. We now discover that the huge mound is a mortar-wall, overgrown with grass on both sides, this opening having been rudely broken through it. Walls, a thousand and more years old! What desolation; what strange fascination! We enter and go up to the top of the embankment. What tongue or pen can adequately describe the emotions awakened? The views in all directions are charming. No mountains are visible to inspire awe; no great metropolis is to be seen; but "sweet fields of living green" hills innumerable, pleasant groves, feeding sheep, tinkling cow-bells, and air sweet with wild flowers and modest daisies (crushed at every tread beneath the feet) are about us; but we leave these, to study the grand old ruin. At the centre is a hollowed, though comparatively level space, of five hundred feet in diameter, covered with grass, bushes, and small mounds. The depression is not far from twenty feet deep, the earth and grass sloping up to the walk, about ten feet wide, which encircles it. The outer edge is irregularly hemmed in by bushes. Outside of this is a mote fifty feet wide, and thirty feet deep. Encircling all is a plateau two hundred feet wide, and another mote, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep. The motes were once filled with water, but now grass has superseded it. Instead of being a barrier against approaching foes, they have better uses. In the language of Whittier, applied to an old New England burial-ground:—

There sheep that graze the neighboring plain
Like white ghosts come and go;

The farm horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.

With variation of tense another verse of the same poem applies to it:—

It knows the glow of eventide,
The sunrise and the noon,

And sanctified and glorified
It sleeps beneath the moon.

The time has come to leave, and we return to our team. Old Sarum has been seen, and is never to be forgotten. Where are they who here thought and labored a thousand years ago? Gone, without a solitary exception, gone to the silent mansions of the dead.