with her till husband and wife were patriarchal,--as these delectable old
houses. They belong naturally to the cathedral, and have a necessary
relation to it, and its sanctity is somehow thrown over them all, so that
they do not quite belong to this world, though they look full to
overflowing of whatever earthly things are good for man. These are
places, however, in which mankind makes no progress; the rushing tumult
of human life here subsides into a deep, quiet pool, with perhaps a
gentle circular eddy, but no onward movement. The same identical
thought, I suppose, goes round in a slow whirl from one generation to
another, as I have seen a withered leaf do in the vortex of a brook. In
the front of the cathedral there is a most stately and beautiful tree,
which flings its verdure upward to a very lofty height; but far above it
rises the tall spire, dwarfing the great tree by comparison.

When the cathedral had sufficiently oppressed us with its beauty, we
returned to sublunary matters, and went wandering about Salisbury in
search of a luncheon, which we finally took in a confectioner's shop.
Then we inquired hither and thither, at various livery-stables, for a
conveyance to Stonehenge, and at last took a fly from the Lamb Hotel.
The drive was over a turnpike for the first seven miles, over a bare,
ridgy country, showing little to interest us. We passed a party of seven
or eight men, in a coarse uniform dress, resembling that worn by convicts
and apparently under the guardianship of a stout, authoritative, yet
rather kindly-looking man with a cane. Our driver said that they were
lunatics from a neighboring asylum, out for a walk.

Seven miles from Salisbury, we turned aside from the turnpike, and drove
two miles across Salisbury Plain, which is an apparently boundless extent
of unenclosed land, treeless and houseless. It is not exactly a plain,
but a green sea of long and gentle swells and subsidences, affording