oaring above the
insignificant little town at its foot, make it a most commanding object
seen from the flat plain.

What is called the octagon, which has taken the place of the central tower
that had fallen, is quite an original feature of the church. Eight arches,
rising from eight ponderous piers, form a windowed tower, or lantern,
which lets in a flood of light upon the otherwise gloomy interior. Above
the keystone of each arch is the carved figure of a saint. The new brasses
of the choir are wonderfully elaborate. The bronze scroll and vine work of
the gates and lamps, for grace and Oriental luxuriance of fancy, for their
arabesque and flower designs, might fitly have belonged to King Solomon's
Temple of old. The modern woodwork of the choir compares also well with
the ancient woodwork carving. Gold stars on azure ground, and all vivid
coloring and gilding, are freely used. The new "reredos," or altar screen,
is one marvelous crystallization of sculptures. The ancient Purbeck marble
pillars have been scraped and re-polished, and form a fine contrast to the
white marbles on which they are set. If, indeed, one wishes to see what
modern enthusiasm, art, and lavish wealth can do for the restoration and
adorning of one of these old temples, he must go to Ely Cathedral.

SALISBURY [Footnote: From "English Note Books." By arrangement with, and
by permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's works, Houghton, Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1870 and 1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

I do not remember any cathedral with so fine a site as this, rising up out
of the center of a beautiful green, extensive enough to show its full
proportions, relieved and insulated from all other patchwork and
impertinence of rusty edifices. It is of gray stone, and looks as perfect
as when just finished, and with the perfection, too, that could not have
come in less than six centuries of venerableness, with a view to which
these edifices seem to have been built. A new cathedral would lack the
last touch to its beauty and grandeur. It needs to be mellowed and
ripened, like some pictures; altho I suppose this awfulness of antiquity
was supplied, in the minds of the generation that built cathedrals, by the
sanctity which they attributed to them.

Salisbury Cathedral is far more beautiful than that of York, the exterior
of which was really disagreeable to my eye; but this mighty spire and
these multitudinous gray pinnacles and towers ascend toward he