Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/46

38 The weather was still wretchedly bad; but I got upon the Great Southern Railway, and passed on to Durham, expecting to see, in the city of a bishop, a quiet English town of the true ancient type. And so I would have done, as the close-piled tenements of antique brick-work, with their secluded old-fashioned courts and tall fantastic gables, testified in detail, had the circumstances been more favorable; but the mist-cloud hung low, and I could see little else than dropping eaves, darkened walls, and streaming pavements. The river which sweeps past the town was big in flood. I crossed along the bridge; saw beyond, a half-drowned country, rich in fields and woods, and varied by the reaches of the stream; and caught between me and the sky, when the fog rose, the outline of the town on its bold ridge, with its stately cathedral elevated highest, as first in place, and its grotesque piles of brick ranging adown the slope in picturesque groups, continuous yet distinct. I next visited the cathedral. The gloomy day was darkening into still gloomier evening, and I found the huge pile standing up amid the descending torrents in its ancient grave-yard, like some mass of fretted rock-work enveloped in the play of a fountain. The great door lay open, but I could see little else within than the ranges of antique columns, curiously moulded,