,
not unimpressive prospect. Two arms of the sea, that cut so deeply into
the mainland on its opposite sides as to narrow it into a flat neck
little more than a mile and a half in breadth, stretch away in long
vista, the one to the south, and the other to the north; and so
immediately is the Cathedral perched on the isthmus between, as to be
nearly equally conspicuous from both. It forms in each, to the
inward-bound vessel, the terminal object in the landscape. There was not
much to admire in the town immediately beneath, with its roofs of gray
slate,--almost the only parts of it visible from this point of
view,--and its bare treeless suburbs; nor yet in the tract of mingled
hill and moor on either hand, into which the island expands from the
narrow neck, like the two ends of a sand-glass; but the long withdrawing
ocean-avenues between, that seemed approaching from south and north to
kiss the feet of the proud Cathedral,--avenues here and there enlivened
on their ground of deep blue by a sail, and fringed on the lee--for the
wind blew freshly in the clear sunshine--with their border of dazzling
white, were objects worth while climbing the tower to see. Ere my
descent, my guide hammered out of the tower-bells, on my special behalf,
somewhat, I daresay, to the astonishment of the burghers below, a set of
chimes handed down entire, in all the notes, from the times of the
monks, from which also the four fine bells of the Cathedral have
descended as an heirloom to the burgh. The chimes would have delighted
the heart of old Lisle Bowles, the poet of

"Well-tun'd bell's enchanting harmony."

I could, however, have preferred listening to their music, though it
seemed really very sweet, a few hundred yards further away; and the
quiet clerical poet,--the restorer of the Sonnet in England, would, I
doubt not, have been of the same mind. The oft-recurring tones of those
bells that ring throughout his verse, and to which Byron wickedly
proposed adding a _cap_, form but an ingredient of the poetry in which
he describes them; and they are represented always as distant tones,
that, while they mingle with the softer harmonies of nature, never
overpower them.

"How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal!

* * * * *

And, hark! with lessening cadence now they fall,
And now, along the white and level tide
They fling their melancholy music wide!
Bidding me many a tender thought recall
Of happy hour