crypts, and, as I said, trap-doors. O God be praised that we live
in this good daylight and this good peace.

BARMOUTH, AUGUST 9TH. - To-day we saw the cathedral at Chester;
and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger
who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far-away
humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was
somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just
imagination, and could put one in the right humour for seeing an
old place, very much as, according to my favourite text, Scott's
novels and poems do for one. His account of the monks in the
Scriptorium, with their cowls over their heads, in a certain
sheltered angle of the cloister where the big Cathedral building
kept the sun off the parchments, was all that could be wished; and
so too was what he added of the others pacing solemnly behind them
and dropping, ever and again, on their knees before a little shrine
there is in the wall, 'to keep 'em in the frame of mind.' You will
begin to think me unduly biassed in this verger's favour if I go on
to tell you his opinion of me. We got into a little side chapel,
whence we could hear the choir children at practice, and I stopped
a moment listening to them, with, I dare say, a very bright face,
for the sound was delightful to me. 'Ah,' says he, 'you're VERY
fond of music.' I said I was. 'Yes, I could tell that by your
head,' he answered. 'There's a deal in that head.' And he shook
his own solemnly. I said it might be so, but I found it hard, at
least, to get it out. Then my father cut in brutally, said anyway
I had no ear, and left the verger so distressed and shaken in the
foundations of his creed that, I hear, he got my father aside
afterwards and said he was sure there was something in my face, and
wanted to know what it was, if not music. He was relieved when he