Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/54

46 deepening shadows, and in catching the general outline between me and the sky. The night had set fairly in long ere I reached my lodging-house. York races had just begun; and bad as the weather was, there was so considerable an influx of strangers into the town, that there were few beds in the inns unoccupied, and I had to content myself with the share of a bed-room in which there were two. My co-partner in the room came in late and went away early; and all I know of him, or shall perhaps ever know, is, that after having first ascertained, not very correctly, as it proved, that I was asleep, he prayed long and earnestly; that, as I afterwards learned from the landlord, he was a Wesleyan Methodist, who had come from the country, not to attend the races, for he was not one of the race-frequenting sort of people, but on some business; and that he was much respected in his neighborhood for the excellence of his character.

Next morning I attended service in the cathedral; and being, I found, half an hour too early, spent the interval not unpleasantly in pacing the aisles and nave, and studying the stories so doubtfully recorded on the old painted glass. As I stood at the western door, and saw the noble stone roof stretching away more than thirty yards overhead, in a long vista of five hundred feet, to the great eastern window, I again experienced the feeling of the previous evening. Never before had I seen so noble a cover. The ornate complexities of the groined vaulting,—the giant columns, with their foliage-bound capitals, sweeping away in magnificent perspective,—the colored light that streamed through more than a hundred huge windows, and but faintly illumined the vast area, after all,—the deep withdrawing aisles, with their streets of tombs,—the great tower, under which a ship of the line might hoist top and top-gallant mast, and find ample room overhead for the play