Page:Letters from England.djvu/172

 of stairs, the shops being below and above; this exists nowhere else in the world. At Chester, too, they have also a cathedral of pink stone, while at York the cathedral is brown, at Salisbury pike-blue, and at Exeter black and green. Nearly all English cathedrals have pillars in the form of water-pipes, a rectangular presbytery, a horrible organ in the middle of the chief nave, and fan-like ribs on the vaulting; what the Puritans did not destroy was added by the blessed Wyatt with his renovations which are unmixed in style. For instance, Salisbury Cathedral is so hopelessly perfect that it makes you feel uneasy: and you circumambulate the town of Salisbury three times as Achilles did at Troy, and then, discovering that you still have two hours to spare before the train starts, you sit down on a bench in the town amid three one-legged old men and watch the local constable puffing out his cheeks to make a baby laugh in its pram. Altogether, nothing is more dreadful than rain in a small town.