INTERIOR LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, LOOKING WEST.
LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, REAR VIEW.
DR. JOHNSON'S BIRTHPLACE, LICHFIELD.
Lichfield has five steeples grouped together in most views of the town from the Vale of Trent, the other two steeples belonging to St. Mary's and St. Michael's churches; the churchyard of the latter is probably the largest in England, covering seven acres, through which an avenue of stately elms leads up to the church. The town has not much else in the way of buildings that is remarkable. In a plain house at a corner of the market-place, where lived one Michael Johnson, a bookseller, Dr. Samuel Johnson, his son, was born in 1709. and in the adjacent market-place is Dr. Johnson's statue upon a pedestal adorned with bas-reliefs: one of these represents the "infant Samuel" sitting on his father's shoulder to imbibe Tory principles from Dr. Sacheverel's sermons: another, the boy carried by his schoolfellows: and a third displays him undergoing a penance for youthful disobedience by standing up for an hour bareheaded in the rain. The "Three Crowns Inn" is also in the market-place, where in 1776 Boswell and Johnson stayed, and, as Boswell writes, "had a comfortable supper and got into high spirits," when Johnson "expatiated in praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were the most sober, decent people in England, were the genteelest in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest English." David Garrick went to school to Dr. Johnson in the suburbs of Lichfield, at Edial; Addison lived once at Lichfield; and Selwyn was its bishop a few years ago, and is buried in the Cathedral close; but the chief memories of the ancient town cluster around St. Chad, Johnson, and Garrick.
LADY GODIVA OF COVENTRY.
The "three spires" which have so much to do with the fame of Lichfield are reproduced in the less pretentious but equally famous town of Coventry, not far away in Warwickshire, but they do not all belong to the same church. The Coventry Cathedral was long ago swept away, but the town still has three churches of much interest, and is rich in the old brick-and-timbered architecture of two and three centuries ago. But the boast of Coventry is Lady Godiva, wife of the Earl of Mercia, who died in 1057. The townsfolk suffered under heavy taxes and services, and she besought her lord to relieve them. After steady refusals he finally consented, but under a condition which he was sure Lady Godiva would not accept, which was none other than that she should ride naked from one end of the town to the other. To his astonishment she consented, and, as Dugdale informs us, "The noble lady upon an appointed day got on horseback naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body but the legs, and then performing her journey, she returned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted the inhabitants a charter of freedom." The inhabitants deserted the streets and barred all the windows, so that no one could see her, but, as there are exceptions to all rules, Tennyson writes that