Many clergymen still ask, “Do you believe in the Devil?” A ‘mauvais plaisant,’ who did not care much for being turned back, lately replied, ‘Samiel, help!’
Evening.
About three o’clock the sky cleared a little; and as I had waited only for that, I jumped into the bespoken gig, and drove as hard as an old hunter would carry me to Stonehenge, the great druidical temple, burial place, or sacrificial altar. The country round Salisbury is fertile, but without trees and in no way picturesque. The wondrous Stonehenge stands on a wide, bare, elevated plain. The orange disk of the cloudless sun touched the horizon just as, astounded at the inexplicable monument before me, I approached the nearest stone, which the setting beams tinged with rose-colour. It is no wonder that popular superstition ascribes this singular group to demoniac power, for scarcely could another such work be achieved with all the mechanical means and contrivances of our times. How then was it possible for a nearly barbarous people to erect such masses, or to transport them thirty miles, the distance of the nearest quarry?[159] Some have maintained that it was merely a sport of Nature, but no one who sees it will assent to this.
I was not the only spectator. A solitary stranger was visible from time to time, who, without seeming to perceive me, had been going round and round among the stones incessantly for the last quarter of an hour. He was evidently counting, and seemed very impatient at something. The next time he emerged, I took the liberty to ask him the cause of his singular demeanour; on which he politely answered, “that he had been told no one could count these stones aright; that every time the number was different; and that this was a trick which Satan, the author of the work, played the curious: that he had within the last two hours confirmed the truth of this statement seven times, and that he should inevitably lose his senses if he tried again.” I advised him to leave off, and go home, as it was growing dark, and Satan might play him a worse trick than this. He fixed his eyes upon me sarcastically, and with what the Scotch call a very ‘uncanny’ expression, looked about him as if for somebody; then suddenly exclaiming “Good-bye, Sir!” strode off, like Peter Schlemil, casting no shadow, (’tis true the sun was set,) with seven-league steps across the down, where he disappeared behind the hill. I now likewise hastened to depart, and trotted on towards the high tower of Salisbury Cathedral, which was just visible in the twilight. Scarcely had I gone a mile, when the high crazy gig broke, and the driver and I were thrown, not very softly, on the turf. The old horse ran off with the shafts, neighing merrily, towards the city. While we were crawling up, we heard the trotting of a horse behind us;—it was the stranger, who galloped by on a fine black horse, and cried out to me, “The Devil sends his best compliments to you, Sir, ‘au revoir;’” and darted off like a whirlwind. This jest was really provoking. “O, you untimely jester!” exclaimed I, “give us help, instead of your ‘fadaises.’” But the echo of his horse’s hoofs alone answered me through the darkness. The driver ran almost a mile after our horse, but came back without any tidings of him. As there was not even a hut near, we were obliged to make up our minds to walk the remaining six miles. Never did a road seem to me more tedious; and I found little compensation in the wonders which the driver related of his hunter, when, twenty years ago, he was the ‘leader of the Salisbury hunt.’
December 29th.
I have turned this day to very good account, but brought home a violent head-ache in the evening, probably the effect of my last night’s adventure.
Salisbury’s far-famed Cathedral boasts of the highest tower in Europe. It is four hundred and ten feet high,—five feet higher than the Minster at Strasburg, if I mistake not. It is at any rate far more beautiful. The exterior is peculiarly distinguished by an air of newness and neatness, and by the perfection of its details. For this it is indebted to two grand repairs which in the course of time it has undergone; the first, under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren; the second, of Mr. Wyatt. The site of this church is also peculiar. It stands like a model, perfectly free and isolated on a smooth-shaven plain of short turf, on one side of which is the Bishop’s palace, on the other high lime-trees. The tower terminates in an obelisk-like spire, with a cross, on which, rather ominously, a weather-cock is planted. This tasteless custom disgraces most of the Gothic churches in England. The tower is five-and-twenty inches out of the perpendicular. This is not visible, except on the inside, where the inclination of the pillars is perceptible. The interior of this magnificent temple is in the highest degree imposing, and has been improved by Wyatt’s genius. It was an admirable idea to remove the most remarkable old monuments from the walls and obscure corners, and to place them in the space between the grand double avenues of pillars, whose unbroken height would almost turn the head giddy. Nothing can have a finer effect than these rows of Gothic sarcophagi, on which the figures of knights or priests lie stretched in their eternal sleep, while their habiliments or armour of stone or metal are lighted with rainbow-tints from the painted windows. Among Templars and other knights, I discovered ‘Richard Longsword,’ who came to England with the Conqueror: near him, a giant figure in alabaster, the sword-bearer of Henry the Seventh, who fell at Bosworth Field, where he fought with two long swords, one in each hand, with which he is here represented.
The cloisters are also very beautiful. Long finely proportioned corridors run at right-angles around the chapter-house, which is supported, like the Remter in Marienburg, by a single pillar in the centre. The bas-reliefs, which surround it in a broad entablature, seem to be of very fine workmanship, but were half destroyed in Cromwell’s time. In the centre stands a worm-eaten oaken table of the thirteenth century, on which—as it seems from tolerably credible tradition—the labourers employed in building the church were paid every evening, at the rate of a penny a-day. The ascent of the spire is very difficult: the latter half must be climbed by slender ladders, like the Stephansthurm in Vienna. At length you reach a little door in the roof, thirty feet under the extreme point. Out of this door, the man who weekly oils the weathercock ascends, in so perilous a manner that it appears inconceivable how a man of seventy can accomplish it. From this door, or rather window, to the top, is, as I have said, a distance of thirty feet, along which there are no other means of climbing than by iron hooks projecting from the outside. The old man gets out of the little window backwards; then, on account of a sort of penthouse over the window, is obliged to bend his body forward, and in that posture to feel for the first hook, without being able to see it. When he has reached it, and caught fast hold, he swings himself up to it, hanging in the air, while he feels out the projection over the window with his feet, after which he climbs from hook to hook. It would certainly be easy to contrive a more convenient and less dangerous ascent; but he has been used to it from his childhood, and will not have it altered. Even at night he has made this terrific ascent, and is delighted that scarcely any strangers, not even sailors, who generally climb the most impracticable places, have ventured to follow him.
As we reached the first outer gallery around the tower, the guide pointed out to me a hawk which hung poised in air twenty or thirty feet above us. “For many years,” said he, “a pair of these birds have built in the tower, and live on the Bishop’s pigeons. I often see one or other of them hanging above the cross, and then suddenly pounce upon a bird: they sometimes let it fall on the roof or gallery of the church, but never stop to pick up prey which has once fallen,—they let it lie and rot there, if I don’t remove it.”
The Bishop’s palace and garden lay in a picturesque group beneath us, and all the chimneys were smoking merrily, for, ‘His Lordship’ was just arrived, but was preparing for a journey to a watering-place. The guide thought that they saw the ‘Lord Bishop’ twice or three times a-year in the cathedral. ‘His Lordship’ never preaches: his sacred functions consist, as it seems, in the spending of fifteen thousand a-year with as much good taste as it has pleased God to bestow upon him;—the labour is sufficiently performed by subalterns. This beautiful Establishment is the only one we on the Continent want to complete our felicity,—the only one which it is worth our while to copy from England. On my return, I walked for some time longer in the darkening church, amid the noble monuments of old heroes, whom my imagination summoned from their tombs.