es a work of Christian
architecture so express purity and repose and the beauty of holiness,
while the green pastures that surround it might well be those of which
the Psalmist writes. When the sun shines on the pale grey stones, and
the level grass, and the silent trees, and throws the long shadow of
the spire across them, it is as though a choir of seraphs sang in
benediction of that peace of God which passeth understanding. The men
who built and planted here were sick of the temples of Baalim, tired
of being cribbed and cabined, weary of quarrelsome winds and voices.
They wanted space and sun, and stillness, comfort and rest, and
beauty, and the quiet ownership of their own; and no men ever more
perfectly expressed, for future times to read, the ideal they had in
mind."

The =Bell Tower=, a striking feature of the close as it was before
1789, is shown on page 19, in the facsimile of an engraving originally
published in 1761, and re-engraved in the superb County History in
1804(?). This shows the campanile standing at the north-west corner of
the inclosure.

In style it was about the same period as the chapter house and
cloisters. The plan appears to have been square, although one writer,
frequently quoted, calls it multangular; the stone tower was in two
massive stories with lancet windows in the lower, and windows with
plate tracery above, with a spire apparently of wood crowning the
whole. Leland speaks of it as "a notable and strong square tower for
great belles, and a pyramis on it, in the cemiterie." It was evidently
massive enough to have stood for centuries, and the single pillar of
Purbeck marble, "lying in its natural bed," which was the central
support that carried the bells, the belfry, and the spire, is
specially mentioned by Price as perfectly sound, but he owns that the
leaden spire, and a wooden upper story, were decayed, and puts forward
a design of a sham classic dome which he hopes might be erected in its
place. When the cathedral was visited in 1553 by the Royal Commission
there remained a peal of ten bells, and the re-casting in 1680 of the
seventh and eighth by the Purdues, local founders, is recorded among
the muniments. The sixth is now the clock bell of the cathedral, but
the fate of the others is absolutely unknown.

[Illustration: DEATH AND THE GALLANT.]

Several of Wyatt's iconoclastic blunders have been already mentioned;
we now come to his chief iniquity. The =Hungerford Chapel=,