It is named after, and occupies the site, or part of the site of an
immense monastery, founded by the Mercian King Peda, in the year
665, and destroyed by fire in the year 1116, which monastery,
though originally termed Medeshamsted, or the homestead on the
meads, was subsequently termed Peterborough, from the circumstance
of its having been reared by the old Saxon monarch for the love of
God and the honour of Saint Peter, as the Saxon Chronicle says, a
book which I went through carefully in my younger days, when I
studied Saxon, for, as I have already told the reader, I was in
those days a bit of a philologist. Like the first, the second
edifice was originally a monastery, and continued so till the time
of the Reformation; both were abodes of learning; for if the Saxon
Chronicle was commenced in the monkish cells of the first, it was
completed in those of the second. What is at present called
Peterborough Cathedral is a noble venerable pile, equal upon the
whole in external appearance to the cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos
and Leon, all of which I have seen. Nothing in architecture can be
conceived more beautiful than the principal entrance, which fronts
the west, and which, at the time we saw it, was gilded with the
rays of the setting sun.

After having strolled about the edifice surveying it until we were
weary, we returned to our inn, and after taking an excellent supper
retired to rest.

At ten o'clock next morning we left the capital of the meads. With
dragon speed, and dragon noise, fire, smoke, and fury, the train
dashed along its road through beautiful meadows, garnished here and
there with pollard sallows; over pretty streams, whose waters stole
along imperceptibly; by venerable old churches, which I vowed I