ng beauty. I have
heard it said that Chichester is the only English cathedral that is
visible at sea.

Within, the cathedral is disappointing, offering one neither richness on
the one hand nor the charm of pure severity on the other. A cathedral
must either be plain or coloured, and Chichester comes short of both
ideals; it has no colour and no purity. Its proportions are, however,
exquisite, and it is impossible to remain here long without passing
under the spell of the stone. Yet had it, one feels, only radiance, how
much finer it would be.

For the completest contrast to the vastness of the cathedral one may
cross into North Street and enter the portal of the toy church of St.
Olave, which dates from the 14th century, and is remarkable, not only
for its minuteness, but as being one of the churches of Chichester
which, in my experience, is not normally locked and barred.

[Sidenote: ROMAN CHICHESTER]

That Chichester was built by the Romans in the geometrical Roman way you
may see as you look down from the Bell Tower upon its four main
streets--north, south, east and west--east becoming Stane-street and
running direct to London. Chichester then was Regnum. On the departure
of the Romans, Cissa, son of Ella, took possession, and the name was
changed to Cissa's Ceastre, hence Chichester. Remnants of the old walls
still stand; and a path has been made on the portion running from North
Street down to West Gate.

[Sidenote: A CLERICAL STRONGHOLD]

More attractive, because more human, than the cathedral itself are its
precincts: the long resounding cloisters, the still, discreet lanes
populous with clerics, and most of all that little terrace of
ecclesiastical residences parallel with South Street, in the shadow of
the mighty fane, covered with creeping greenness, from wistaria to
ampelopsis, with minute windows, inviolable front doors and trim front
gardens, which (like all similar settlements) remind one of alms-houses
carried out to the highest power. Surely the best of places in which to
edit Horace afresh or find new meanings in St. Augustine.

[Illustration: _Chichester Cross._]

There is a tendency for the cathedral to absorb all the attention of the
traveller, but Chichester has other beauties, including the Market
Cross, which is a mere child of stone, dating only from the reign of
Henry VIII.; St. Mary's Hospital in North Street; and the remains of the
monastery of the Grey Friars in the Priory Park. You