"fancifully wrought at top into flourishes and flowers."

[Illustration: The "Dane John" from the City Wall Canterbury]

A few steps further on is the West Gate, "standing between two lofty and
spacious round towers erected in the river," built by Archbishop
Sudbury, who was barbarously murdered by Wat Tyler in the reign of
Richard II., which is the sole remaining one of six gates formerly
constituting the approaches to the city. From this gate, looking
eastward, with the river Stour on either side, banked by neatly-trimmed
private gardens, a beautiful view of the city is obtained. The High
Street, crowded with gables of the sixteenth century and later timbered
houses, slightly bends and rises as well, until the perspective seems to
lose itself in a distant grove of trees, locally called the "Dane John,"
a corruption of "Donjon." This view, especially when seen on a summer
afternoon, is most picturesque. The present appearance of the quiet
street is decidedly unlike that which it presented on that busy
market-day when Miss Betsey Trotwood drove her nephew along it, for
David says, "My aunt had a good opportunity of insinuating the grey pony
among carts, baskets, vegetables, and hucksters' goods. The hair-breadth
turns and twists we made drew down upon us a variety of speeches from
the people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my
aunt drove on with perfect indifference."

We notice in the windows and in many of the shops an abundance of
brightly-coloured cut-flowers, a notable feature of the county of Kent;
but we have little time to spare, and hasten on to the Cathedral
precincts.

"What a magnificent edifice!" is our first thought on beholding the
Cathedral, a noble pile so well befitting the Metropolitan See of
England, from which the Christianity of the Kingdom first flowed. Dating
from Ethelbert, at the close of the sixth century, three structures have
successively occupied the site, culminating in the present one, which,
according to Mr. Phillips Bevan, was erected at different times between
1070 and 1500; and he goes on to say:--"No wonder that it exhibits so
many styles and peculiarities of detail, although the two most prominent
architectural eras are those of 'Transition-Norman' and
'Perpendicular.'"

The appropriate stone figures in niches of distinguished Royal and
Ecclesiastical personages associated with the Cathedral (which at the
suggestion of Dean Alford in 1863 replaced those