We visited this magnificent building while our dinner was getting ready: like all such buildings, it has its traditional tales of absurdity and exaggeration—that it has as many private chapels as months in a year, as many doors as weeks, as many pillars as days, as many windows as hours, and as many partitions in the windows as minutes: they say also, that it is founded upon wool-packs, because nothing else could resist the humidity of the soil. It has lately undergone, or, I should rather say, suffered a thorough repair in the true spirit of reformation. Every thing has been cleared away to give it the appearance of one huge room. The little chapels, which its pious founders and benefactors had erected in the hope of exciting piety in others, and profiting by their prayers, are all swept away! but you may easily conceive what wild work a protestant architect must make with a cathedral, when he fits it to his own notions of architecture, without the slightest feeling or knowledge of the design with which such buildings were originally erected. The naked monuments are now ranged in rows between the pillars, one opposite another, like couples for a dance, so as never monuments were placed before, and, it is to be hoped, never will be placed hereafter. Here is the tomb of a nobleman, who, in the reign of our Philip and Mary, was executed for murder, like a common malefactor, with this difference only, that he had the privilege of being hanged in a silken halter; a singularity which, instead of rendering his death less ignominious, has made the ignominy more notorious. The cloisters and the chapter-house have escaped alteration. I have seen more beautiful cloisters in our own country, but never a finer chapterhouse; it is supported, as usual, by one central pillar, whose top arches off on all sides, like the head of a spreading palm. The bishop’s palace was bought during the reign of the presbyterians by a rich tailor, who demolished it and sold the materials.
The cemetery has suffered even more than the church, if more be possible, from the abominable sacrilege, and abominable taste of the late bishop and his chapter. They have destroyed all memorials of the dead, for the sake of laying it down as a smooth well-shorn grass plat, garnished with bright yellow gravel walks! This suits no feeling of the mind connected with religious reverence, with death, or with the hope of immortality; indeed it suits with nothing except a new painted window at the altar, of truly English design, (for England is not the country of the arts,) and an organ, bedecked with crocketed pinnacles, more than ever was Gothic tower, and of stone colour, to imitate masonry! This, however, it should be added, was given in a handsome manner by the King. A subscription was raised through the diocese to repair the cathedral, the King having enquired of the bishop how it succeeded, proceeded to ask why he himself had not been applied to for a contribution. The prelate, with courtly submission, disclaimed such presumption as highly improper. I live at Windsor, said the King, in your diocese, and, though I am not rich, can afford to give you an organ, which I know you want; so order one in my name, and let it be suitable to so fine a cathedral.
The soil here abounds so much with water, that there are no vaults in the churches, nor cellars in the city; a spring will sometimes gush up when they are digging a grave. Little streams flow through several of the streets, so that the city has been called the English Venice; but whoever gave it this appellation, either had never seen Venice, or grossly flattered Salisbury. Indeed, till the resemblance was invented, these streamlets were rather thought inconvenient than beautiful; and travellers complained that they made the streets not so clean and not so easy of passage, as they would have been otherwise. The place is famous for the manufactory of knives and scissars, which are here brought to the greatest possible perfection. I am sorry it happened to be Sunday; for the shops, which form so lively a feature in English towns, are all fastened up with shutters, which give the city a melancholy and mourning appearance. I saw, however, a priest walking in his cassock from the church,—the only time when the priests are distinguished in their dress from the laity.
A remarkable instance of insolent impiety occurred lately in a village near this place. A man, in derision of religion, directed in his will, that his horse should be caparisoned and led to his grave, and there shot, and buried with him, that he might be ready to mount at the resurrection, and start to advantage. To the disgrace of the country this was actually performed; the executors and the legatees probably thought themselves bound to obey the will; but it is unaccountable why the clergyman did not interfere, and apply to the bishop.
LETTER V.
Old Sarum.—Country thinly peopled,—Basingstoke.—Ruins of a Catholic Chapel.—Waste Land near London.—Staines.—Iron Bridges.—Custom of exposing the dead Bodies of Criminals.—Hounslow.—Brentford.—Approach to London.—Arrival.
Monday, April 26.
Half a league from Salisbury, close on the left of the London road, is Old Sarum, the Sorbiodunum of the Romans, famous for many reasons. It covered the top of a round hill, which is still surrounded with a mound of earth and a deep fosse. Under the Norman kings it was a flourishing town, but subject to two evils; the want of water, and the oppression of the castle soldiers. The townsmen, therefore, with one consent, removed to New Sarum, the present Salisbury, where the first of these evils is more than remedied; and the garrison was no longer maintained at Old Sarum when there was nobody to be pillaged. So was the original city deserted, except by its right of representation in parliament; not a soul remaining there. Seven burgage tenures, in a village westward of it, produce two burgesses to serve in parliament for Old Sarum; four of these tenures (the majority) were sold very lately for a sum little short of 200,000 peso-duros.
From this place Salisbury Plain stretches to the north, but little of it is visible from the road which we were travelling: much of this wide waste has lately been inclosed and cultivated. I regretted that I could not visit Stonehenge, the famous druidical monument, which was only a league and a half distant: but as J— was on his way home, after so long an absence, I could not even express a wish to delay him.