But one would linger long on the way if he paused at every landmark on the Southampton road. We had already loitered in the short distance which we had traveled until it was growing late, and with open throttle our car rapidly covered the last twenty miles of the fine road leading into Winchester.
From an historical point of view, no town in the Kingdom surpasses the proud old city of Winchester. The Saxon capital still remembers her ancient splendor and it was with a manifest touch of pride that the old verger who guided us through the cathedral dwelt on the long line of kings who had reigned at Winchester before the Norman conquest. To him, London at best was only an upstart and an usurper. Why,
"When Oxford was shambles
And Westminster was brambles,
Winchester was in her glory."
And her glory has never departed from her and never will so long as her great cathedral stands intact, guarding its age-long line of proud traditions. The exterior is not altogether pleasing—the length exceeding that of any cathedral in Europe, together with the abbreviated tower, impresses one with a painful sense of lack of completeness and a failure of proper proportion. It has not the splendid site of Durham or Lincoln, the majesty of the massive tower of Canterbury, or the grace of the great spire of Salisbury. But its interior makes full amends. No cathedral in all England can approach it in elaborate carvings and furnishings or in interesting relics and memorials. Here lie the bones of the Saxon King Ethelwulf, father of Alfred the Great; of Canute, whose sturdy common sense silenced his flatterers; and of many others. A scion of the usurping Norman sleeps here too, in the tomb where William Rufus was buried, "with many looking on and few grieving." In the north aisle a memorial stone covers the grave of Jane Austen and a great window to her memory sends its many-colored shafts of light from above. In the south transept rests Ike Walton, prince of fishermen, who, it would seem to us, must have slept more peacefully by some rippling brook. During the Parliamentary wars Winchester was a storm center and the cathedral suffered severely at the hands of the Parliamentarians. Yet fortunately, many of its ancient monuments and furnishings escaped the wrath of the Roundhead iconoclasts. The cathedral is one of the oldest in England, having been mainly built in the Ninth Century. Recently it has been discovered that the foundations are giving away to an extent that makes extensive restoration necessary, but it will be only restored and not altered in any way.
But we may not pause long to tell the story of even Winchester Cathedral in this hasty record of a motor flight through Britain. And, speaking of the motor car, ardent devotee as I am, I could not help feeling a painful sense of the inappropriateness of its presence in Winchester; of its rush through the streets at all hours of the night; of its clatter as it climbed the steep hills in the town; of the blast of its unmusical horn; and of its glaring lights, falling weirdly on the old buildings. It seemed an intruder in the capital of King Alfred.
There is much else in Winchester, though the cathedral and its associations may overshadow everything. The college, one of the earliest educational institutions in the Kingdom, was founded about 1300, and many of the original buildings stand almost unchanged. The abbey has vanished, though the grounds still serve as a public garden; and of Wolvesley Palace, a castle built in 1138, only the keep still stands. How usual this saying, "Only the keep still stands," becomes of English castles,—thanks to the old builders who made the keep strong and high to withstand time, and so difficult to tear down that it escaped the looters of the ages.
A day might well be given to the vicinity of Winchester, which teems with points of literary and historic interest. In any event, one should visit Twyford, only three miles away, often known as the "queen of the Hampshire villages" and famous for the finest yew tree in England. It is of especial interest to Americans, since Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography here while a guest of Dr. Shipley, Vicar of St. Asaph, whose house, a fine Elizabethan mansion, still stands.
To Salisbury by way of Romsey is a fine drive of about thirty miles over good roads and through a very pleasing country. Long before we reached the town there rose into view its great cathedral spire, the loftiest and most graceful in Britain, a striking landmark from the country for miles around. Following the winding road and passing through the narrow gateway entering High Street, we came directly upon this magnificent church, certainly the most harmonious in design of any in the Kingdom. The situation, too, is unique, the cathedral standing entirely separate from any other building, its gray walls and buttresses rising sheer up from velvety turf such as is seen in England alone. It was planned and completed within the space of fifty years, which accounts for its uniformity of style; while the construction of most of the cathedrals ran through the centuries with various architecture in vogue at different periods. The interior, however, lacks interest, and the absence of stained glass gives an air of coldness. It seems almost unbelievable that the original stained windows were deliberately destroyed at the end of the Eighteenth Century by a so-called architect, James Wyatt, who had the restoration of the cathedral in charge. To his everlasting infamy, "Wyatt swept away screens, chapels and porches, desecrated and destroyed the tombs of warriors and prelates, obliterated ancient paintings; flung stained glass by cart loads into the city ditch; and razed to the ground the beautiful old campanile which stood opposite the north porch." That such desecration should be permitted in a civilized country only a century ago indeed seems incredible.
No one who visits Salisbury will forget Stonehenge, the most remarkable relic of prehistoric man to be found in Britain. Nearly everyone is familiar with pictures of this solitary circle of stones standing on an eminence of Salisbury Plain, but one who has not stood in the shadow of these gigantic monoliths can have no idea of their rugged grandeur. Their mystery is deeper than that of Egypt's sphynx, for we know something of early Egyptian history, but the very memory of the men who reared the stones on Salisbury Plain is forgotten. Who they were, why they built this strange temple, or how they brought for long distances these massive rocks that would tax modern resources to transport, we have scarcely a hint. The stones stand in two concentric circles, those of the inner ring being about half the height of the outer ones. Some of the stones are more than twenty feet high and extend several feet into the ground. There are certain signs which seem to indicate that Stonehenge was the temple of some early sun-worshiping race, and Sir Norman Lockyer, who has made a special study of the subject, places the date of construction about 1680 B.C. No similar stone is found in the vicinity; hence it is proof positive that the builders of Stonehenge must have transported the enormous monoliths for many miles. The place lies about eight miles north of Salisbury. We went over a rather lonely and uninteresting road by the way of Amesbury, which is two miles from Stonehenge. We returned by a more picturesque route, following the River Avon to Salisbury and passing through Millston, a quaint little village where Joseph Addison was born in 1672.