r the dust it presses on is all that remains of the
earthly portion of creatures once breathing and living like yourself.
What a lesson is afforded us when we contemplate, on the one hand the
works of men of ages long past, but still standing as monuments of
their skill and piety, and on the other the graves of the silent dead;
the heads which planned and the hands which executed, where are they?
Long since consigned to earth. All must feel, more or less, the
influence of impressions to which such thoughts and scenes give rise,
and may such feelings cause us to remember that we are but dust, and
that we must, perhaps soon, become as those who lie beneath our feet!

"Our time is fixed, and all our days are numbered,
How long, how short, we know not."--_Blair_.

The church-yard has been closed from burials for some years, and a
cemetery has been formed a short distance from the town for the use of
both parishes, as well as for the precincts which are extra-parochial.
Many of the gravestones have been laid down, others removed, but a few
inscriptions might be found which would afford food for meditation to
those who may feel inclined to examine them.

* * * * *

At the commencement of our survey we examined the western front, and
will now turn our attention to the remains of the north-west Transept.
Some persons have doubted whether this wing ever existed, but Sir.
G.G. Scott, in his able Lecture on the Cathedral, delivered at the
Etheldreda Festival in October, 1873, gave good reasons for believing
that it was built at the same time as the Tower and the south wing;
and we cannot but think the ruins give strong evidence of its having
been similar in all respects to that on the south side. There is in
this, as in the other, a grand semicircular arch on the eastern side,
and portions of another which probably communicated with some chapel,
of which however there are neither remains nor record. It would appear
that after the fall of the original wing a new building was begun on
the same spot, not however of the same dimensions, and carried but a
few feet and then discontinued. A band of panelling in the western
face of the buttress corresponds with the work on the monument of
Bishop Redman, who died in 1505, but the fall of the Transept took
place some years, probably a century, before that. The arches built
within the original arches of the Tower to afford additional support
are b