with a double arcade and having an upper chamber. The
nave is beautiful, though it suffers somewhat in warmth of coloring from
lacking stained glass, and the cloisters, which are entered from the
south-western transept, are admirable, being of later date and
exhibiting a more developed style than the remainder of the cathedral.
Their graceful windows and long gray arcades contrast splendidly with
the greensward of the cloister-garth. They include an octagonal
chapter-house, fifty-eight feet in diameter and fifty-two feet high,
which has been restored in memory of a recent bishop at a cost of
$260,000. The restoration has enriched the house with magnificent
sculptures representing Old-Testament history, and the restoration of
the cathedral is also progressing. The adjoining episcopal palace is an
irregular but picturesque pile of buildings, with a gateway tower that
is a prominent feature.

Salisbury has plenty of old houses, like most English towns, and it also
has a large square market-place, containing the Gothic Poultry Cross, a
most graceful stone structure, and also the council-house of modern
erection, in front of which is a statue of Sidney Herbert. Its ancient
banquet-hall, built four hundred years ago by John Halle, and having a
lofty timber roof and an elaborately-carved oak screen, is now used as
the show-room for a shop.

[Illustration: SALISBURY MARKET.]

To the northward of Salisbury is that region filled with prehistoric
relics known as Salisbury Plain. Here are ancient fortresses, barrows,
and sepulchral mounds, earthworks, dykes, and trenches, roadways of the
Roman and the Briton, and the great British stronghold, guarding the
southern entrance to the plain, which became the Old Sarum of later
times. Until within a century this plain was a solitary and almost
abandoned region, but now there are good roads crossing it and much of
the land is cultivated. It is a great triangular chalk-measure, each
side roughly estimated at twenty miles long. The Bourne, Wiley, and Avon
flow through it to meet near Salisbury, and all the bolder heights
between their valleys are marked by ancient fortifications. Wiltshire is
thus said to be divided between chalk and cheese, for the northern
district beyond the plain is a great dairy region. Let us journey
northward from Salisbury across the plain, and as we enter its southern
border there rises up almost at the edge the conical hill of Old Sarum,
crowned by intrenchment