celsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the
spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it
in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty
feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges,
to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The situation and
appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must be terrific, yet many
persons have voluntarily and daringly clambered to the top, even in a
state of intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was not the state of my most
valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady
nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with
his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down
upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, or a
balloon.

In saying that the exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is more interesting
than its interior, I was perhaps unfair to the latter, which only yields
to the surpassing claims of the wonderful structure as seen from the
outside. One may get a little tired of marble Crusaders, with their
crossed legs and broken noses, especially if, as one sometimes finds
them, they are covered with the pencilled autographs of cockney
scribblers. But there are monuments in this cathedral which excite
curiosity, and others which awaken the most striking associations. There
is the "Boy Bishop," his marble effigy protected from vandalism by an
iron cage. There is the skeleton figure representing Fox (who should
have been called Goose), the poor creature who starved himself to death
in trying to imitate the fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since
this performance has been taken out of the list of miracles, it is not
so likely to be repeated by fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion
that this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, like the
"hangman's stone" legend, which I have found in so many different parts
of England. Skulls and crossbones, sometimes skeletons or skeleton-like
figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an
earlier period. Where one of these figures is found, the forty-day-fast
story is likely to grow out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak
or apple tree.

With far different emotions we look upon the spot where lie buried many
of the Herbert family, among the rest,

"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,"

for whom Ben Jonson wrote the celebrated ep