Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/41

38 built by kings and bishops, to say nothing of some of the best art of our own time; sculpture by Flaxman and Chantrey. Their details were lost upon us in the effect of the great whole; the long-drawn aisles, the windows with their exquisite colouring, the lofty vault, the carved stones, the pillars and arches—those beautiful Gothic arches. We had some compensation for the unconsciousness of a lifetime, of the power of architecture, in our overwhelming emotions. They cannot be repeated. We cannot see a cathedral twice for the first time, that is very clear!

I was not prepared for the sensations to be excited by visiting these old places of the Old World. There is nothing in our land to aid the imperfect lights of history. Here it seems suddenly verified. Its long-buried dead, or, rather, its dim spectres, appear with all the freshness of actual fife. A miracle is wrought on poetry and painting. While they represented what we had never seen, they were but shadows to us; a kind of magic mirrors, showing false images; now they seem a Divine form, for the perpetual preservation of the beautiful creations of Nature and art

It happened that while We were in Winchester Cathedral service was performed there. I cannot tell how I might have been affected if it had been a more hearty service. There were the officials, the clergyman and clerk, a choir of boys, and, for the audience, half a dozen men, three or four women, octogenarians, or verging on the extreme of human