g a column. While thus
holding up the cathedral with its head and hand above, and choking a
writhing dragon beneath, he looks smiling and unconcerned, as if it were
an everyday affair with him, as indeed it is. The whole church abounds in
these old sculptures, little demoniac figures with big heads, faces with
enormous fish mouths, old men with packs on their backs, and angels with
huge armfuls of flowers. They seem to let one into the interior chambers
of fancy, the imaginative workings of the human mind in the middle
ages....

Wells Cathedral, on the whole, is distinguished for a dignified but rich
simplicity, arising from its plain large surfaces, mingled and edged here
and there with fine-cut and elegant ornamentation. The court and buildings
of the Wells Theological College have a thoroughly quaint, old-fashioned
look, quiet, rigid, and medieval; as if the students reared there could
not but be Churchmen of the "Brother Ignatius" stamp, gentlemen, scholars,
and--priests. I can not leave Wells without speaking of the two splendid
"cedars of Lebanon" standing in the environs of the church. They are not
very tall, but they sweep the ground majestically, and grow in a series of
broad, heavy masses of foliage, gracefully undulating in their outline.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS [Footnote: From "The Abbeys of Great Britain."]

BY H. CLAIBORNE DIXON

The history of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, altho veiled in much
legendary and mythical lore, tells, nevertheless, in its actual history of
the progress of civilization and of the enlightenment of the human mind.
Sigberet, King of the East Angles, is said to have founded the first
monastery at Beodericsworth (a town known to the Romans, ancient Britains,
Saxons, and Danes), and to have subsequently laid aside his royal dignity
by joining the brotherhood which he had established. Following his example
of religious devotion, Edmund, last King of the Angles, sacrificed not
only his crown but his life in defense of the Christian faith, for he was
beheaded by the Danes at Eglesdene in 870....

His head was cast into a forest, and, as the story goes, was miraculously
discovered and found to be guarded by a wolf. It was then buried with the
body at the village of Hoxne, where it remained until 903. In this year,
"the precious, undefiled, uncorrupted body of the glorious king and
martyr" was translated to the care of the secular priests at
Beodericsworth, since when the town has bee