lesser spires disappear one by
one, until the great shaft is left standing alone,--solitary as the
broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, as the mast of some mighty
ship above the waves which have rolled over the foundering vessel. Most
persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few
can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if
they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which
prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It
does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the
same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one
whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as
standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the
sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high"
than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of
Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my
eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that
"bad eminence," as I am sure that I should have found it.

I soon noticed a slight deflection from the perpendicular at the upper
part of the spire. This has long been observed. I could not say that I
saw the spire quivering in the wind, as I felt that of Strasburg doing
when I ascended it,--swaying like a blade of grass when a breath of air
passes over it. But it has been, for at least two hundred years, nearly
two feet out of the perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was
found to exist when it was examined early in the present century. It is
a wonder that this slight-looking structure can have survived the
blasts, and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the weakening effects of
time on its stones and timbers for five hundred years. Since the spire
of Chichester Cathedral fell in 1861, sheathing itself in its tower like
a sword dropping into its scabbard, one can hardly help looking with
apprehension at all these lofty fabrics. I have before referred to the
fall of the spire of Tewkesbury Abbey church, three centuries earlier.
There has been a good deal of fear for the Salisbury spire, and great
precautions have been taken to keep it firm, so that we may hope it will
stand for another five hundred years. It ought to be a "joy forever,"
for it is a thing of beauty, if ever there were one.

I never felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in
"Ex