at this day, if I were a canon of Gloucester, I would put that dim
ambulatory to a good use. The library is adjacent to the cloisters, and
I saw some rows of folios and quartos. I have nothing else to record
about the cathedral, though if I were to stay there a month, I suppose it
might then begin to be understood. It is wicked to look at these solemn
old churches in a hurry. By the by, it was not built in a hurry; but in
full three hundred years, having been begun in 1188 and only finished in
1498, not a great many years before Papistry began to go out of vogue in
England.

From Gloucester I took the rail for Basingstoke before noon. The first
part of the journey was through an uncommonly beautiful tract of country,
hilly, but not wild; a tender and graceful picturesqueness,--fine, single
trees and clumps of trees, and sometimes wide woods, scattered over the
landscape, and filling the nooks of the hills with luxuriant foliage.
Old villages scattered frequently along our track, looking very peaceful,
with the peace of past ages lingering about them; and a rich, rural
verdure of antique cultivation everywhere. Old country-seats--specimens
of the old English hall or manor-house--appeared on the hillsides, with
park-scenery surrounding the mansions; and the gray churches rose in the
midst of all the little towns. The beauty of English scenery makes me
desperate, it is so impossible to describe it, or in any way to record
its impression, and such a pity to leave it undescribed; and, moreover, I
always feel that I do not get from it a hundredth or a millionth part of
the enjoyment that there really is in it, hurrying past it thus. I was
really glad when we rumbled into a tunnel, piercing for a long distance
through a hill; and, emerging on the other side, we found ourselves in a
comparatively level and uninteresting tract of country, which lasted till
we reached Southampton. English scenery, to be appreciated and to be
reproduced with pen and pencil, requires to be dwelt upon long, and to be