The walk round the old wall of Chester is
wonderfully interesting and beautiful. At one part it overlooks a wide
level field, over which the annual races are run. I noticed that here as
elsewhere the short grass was starred with daisies. They are not
considered in place in a well-kept lawn. But remembering the cuckoo song
in "Love's Labour's Lost," "When daisies pied ... do paint the meadows
with delight," it was hard to look at them as unwelcome intruders.

The old cathedral seemed to me particularly mouldy, and in fact too
high-flavored with antiquity. I could not help comparing some of the
ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so many old cheeses. They have
a tough gray rind and a rich interior, which find food and lodging for
numerous tenants who live and die under their shelter or their
shadow,--lowly servitors some of them, portly dignitaries others, humble
holy ministers of religion many, I doubt not,--larvae of angels, who
will get their wings by and by. It is a shame to carry the comparison so
far, but it is natural enough; for Cheshire cheeses are among the first
things we think of as we enter that section of the country, and this
venerable cathedral is the first that greets the eyes of great numbers
of Americans.

We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, the
many-millioned lord of a good part of London. It is a palace,
high-roofed, marble-columned, vast, magnificent, everything but
homelike, and perhaps homelike to persons born and bred in such
edifices. A painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like this not too
grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us
do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the
owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a
vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never get into a
very large and lofty saloon without feeling as if I were a weak solution
of myself,--my personality almost drowned out in the flood of space
about me. The wigwam is more homelike than the cavern. Our wooden houses
are a better kind of wigwam; the marble palaces are artificial caverns,
vast, resonant, chilling, good to visit, not desirable to live in, for
most of us. One's individuality should betray itself in all that
surrounds him; he should _secrete_ his shell, like a mollusk; if he
can sprinkle a few pearls through it, so much the better. It is best,
perhaps, that one should avoid being a duk