me of Gilbert
White, the naturalist, and famed as one of the quaintest and most
retired villages in Hampshire.

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 th