circumscribed space, whose soft, brilliant green is in lovely contrast
with the paler hue of the downs beyond, the perennial moist green of its
water-meadows. For many swift, clear currents flow around and through
Salisbury, and doubtless in former days there were many more channels in
the town itself. Leland's description is worth quoting: "There be many
fair streates in the Cite Saresbyri, and especially the High Streate and
Castle Streate.... Al the Streates in a maner, in New Saresbyri, hath
little streamlettes and arms derivyd out of Avon that runneth through
them. The site of the very town of Saresbyri and much ground thereabout
is playne and low, and as a pan or receyvor of most part of the waters
of Wiltshire."

On this scene, this red town with the great spire, set down among
water-meadows, encircled by paler green chalk hills, I look from the top
of the inner and highest rampart or earth-work; or going a little
distance down sit at ease on the turf to gaze at it by the hour. Nor
could a sweeter resting-place be found, especially at the time of ripe
elder-berries, when the thickets are purple with their clusters and the
starlings come in flocks to feed on them, and feeding keep up a
perpetual, low musical jangle about me.

It is not, however, of "New Saresbyri" as seen by the tourist, with a
mind full of history, archaeology, and the aesthetic delight in
cathedrals, that I desire to write, but of Salisbury as it appears to
the dweller on the Plain. For Salisbury is the capital of the Plain, the
head and heart of all those villages, too many to count, scattered far
and wide over the surrounding country. It is the villager's own peculiar
city, and even as the spot it stands upon is the "pan or receyvor of
most part of the waters of Wiltshire," so is it the receyvor of all he
accomplishes in his laborious life, and thitherward flow all his