Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/296

 has been chosen for the proud and secure situation of the castle and cathedral. Under the protection of these a city of considerable extent grew up, and scattered itself down the steep of the hill, and along the other bank of the river. But all the beauty of Durham is confined to its outside; like all other old cities built in times, when men were content to sacrifice comfort to safety, or before they had attained to adequate ideas of refinement or convenience; the streets are narrow, dark, and dirty—the houses old, gloomy, and ugly. Carpet and cotton manufactories formerly gave some little life to the sombrè of the place; but the same complaint existed here as in other towns; war had paralyzed their operations, and the melancholy skeletons of what they had hitherto been, now only remained.

The cathedral and castle afforded us an agreeable employment for the morning; in both we had the the perfection of early architecture. Of the former the western end is a fine specimen of the Anglo-Norman, plain and massive. Its few ornaments are of the zig-zag kind; a favourite stile of decoration at the æra of its erection, the latter end of the eleventh century and beginning of the twelfth ; when Carilepho began, and Ralf Flambard executed, the work. Its length is four hundred and eleven feet,