e golden grain;
The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light,
Till all the fading picture fails the sight....
Now climb the steep, drop now your eye below,
Where round the verdurous village orchards blow;
There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat,
A rural, sheltered, unobserved retreat.
Me far above the rest, Selbornian scenes.
The pendant forest and the mountain-greens,
Strike with delight: ... There spreads the distant view
That gradual fades, till sunk in misty blue."

[Illustration: GREATHAM CHURCH.]

WINCHESTER.

[Illustration: CARDINAL BEAUFORT'S GATE AND ANCIENT BREWERY.]

About sixteen miles south-west of Selborne is the chief city of
Hampshire and one of the great historical cities of the
realm--Winchester--built on the side of a chalk-hill rising from the
valley of the Itchen, a stream that was Izaak Walton's favorite
fishing-ground. This was the Roman Venta Belgarum, and was made an
episcopal see in the seventh century. Nothing remains of the earlier
cathedral, which was replaced by the present structure, begun in the
eleventh century, but not finished until the fifteenth. Winchester
Cathedral is five hundred and sixty feet long, and its nave is in the
highest degree impressive, being the longest in England, extending two
hundred and sixty-five feet. The western front has recently been
restored. Within the cathedral are many noted tombs, including that of
William Rufus, and above the altar is West's painting of the "Raising of
Lazarus." In the presbytery are six mortuary chests containing the
remains of kings and bishops of the ancient Saxon kingdom of Wessex. St.
Swithin's shrine was the treasure of Winchester: he was bishop in the
ninth century and the especial patron of the city and cathedral.
Originally interred in the churchyard, his remains were removed to the
golden shrine given by King Edgar, though tradition says this was
delayed by forty days of rain, which is the foundation of the popular
belief in the continuance of wet weather after St. Swithin's Day, July
15. In the Lady Chapel, Queen Mary was married to Philip of Spain in
1554, and the chair on which she sat is still preserved there. The
cathedral close is extremely picturesque, surrounded by houses of
considerable antiquity. Among the prelates of Winchester were William of
Wykeham and Cardinal Beaufort: the former founded St. Mary's College
there in the fourteenth century--a fine structure, with the picturesque