and bishops, which lie on
their backs with clasped hands, seem to have been wofully maltreated and
despoiled, in the fervor of those days, when people fondly thought that
breaking down carved work was getting rid of superstition. These granite
saints and bishops, with their mutilated fingers and broken noses, seem
to be bearing a silent, melancholy witness against that disposition in
human nature, which, instead of making clean the cup and platter, breaks
them altogether.

The roof of the cathedral is a splendid specimen of carving in black
oak, wrought in panels, with leaves and inscriptions in ancient text.
The church could once boast in other parts (so says an architectural
work) a profusion of carved woodwork of the same character, which must
have greatly relieved the massive plainness of the interior.

In 1649, the parish minister attacked the "High Altar," a piece of the
most splendid workmanship of any thing of the kind in Europe, and which
had to that time remained inviolate; perhaps from the insensible
influence of its beauty. It is said that the carpenter employed for the
purpose was so struck with the noble workmanship, that he refused to
touch it till the minister took the hatchet from his hand and gave the
first blow.

These men did not consider that "the leprosy lies deep within," and
that when human nature is denied beautiful idols, it will go after ugly
ones. There has been just as unspiritual a resting in coarse, bare, and
disagreeable adjuncts of religion, as in beautiful and agreeable ones;
men have worshipped Juggernaut as pertinaciously as they have Venus or
the Graces; so that the good divine might better have aimed a sermon at
the heart than an axe at the altar.

We lingered a long time around here, and could scarcely tear ourselves
away. We paced up and down under the old trees, looking off on the
waters of the Don, listening to the waving branches, and falling into a
dreamy state of mind, thought what if it were six hundred years ago! and
we were pious simple hearted old abbots! What a fine place that would be
to walk up and down at eventide or on a Sabbath morning, reciting the
penitential psalms, or reading St. Augustine!

I cannot get over the feeling, that the souls of the dead do somehow
connect themselves with the places of their former habitation, and that
the hush and thrill of spirit, which we feel in them, may be owing to
the overshadowing presence of the invisible. St. Paul says