ched the Celestial City!

[Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral.]

It must have been a pretty bitter quarrel that drove the tenants of the
airy height of Old Sarum to remove to the marshy level of the present
site of the cathedral and the town. I wish we could have given more time
to the ancient fortress and cathedral town. This is one of the most
interesting historic localities of Great Britain. We looked from
different points of view at the mounds and trenches which marked it as a
strongly fortified position. For many centuries it played an important
part in the history of England. At length, however, the jealousies of
the laity and the clergy, a squabble like that of "town and gown," but
with graver underlying causes, broke up the harmony and practically
ended the existence of the place except as a monument of the past. It
seems a pity that the headquarters of the Prince of Peace could not have
managed to maintain tranquillity within its own borders. But so it was;
and the consequence followed that Old Sarum, with all its grand
recollections, is but a collection of mounds and hollows,--as much a
tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great city, Nineveh. Old Sarum
is now best remembered by its long-surviving privilege, as a borough, of
sending two members to Parliament. The farcical ceremony of electing two
representatives who had no real constituency behind them was put an end
to by the Reform Act of 1832.

Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, within an easy drive's
distance from Salisbury, was the first nobleman's residence I saw in my
early visit. Not a great deal of what I then saw had survived in my
memory. I recall the general effect of the stately mansion and its
grounds. A picture or two of Vandyke's had not quite faded out of my
recollection. I could not forget the armor of Anne de Montmorenci,--not
another Maid of Orleans, but Constable of France,--said to have been
taken in battle by an ancestor of the Herberts. It was one of the first
things that made me feel I was in the Old World. Miles Standish's sword
was as far back as New England collections of armor carried us at that
day. The remarkable gallery of ancient sculptures impressed me at the
time, but no one bust or statue survived as a distinct image. Even the
beautiful Palladian bridge had not pictured itself on my mental tablet
as it should have done, and I could not have taken my oath that I had
seen it. But the pretty English maidens whom we