veiled in haze, which seemed to shut
off the sad island from the world. On a clear day, no doubt, the view
must be full of grandeur, the inland downs, edged everywhere with the
tall scarped cliffs, headland after headland, with the long soft line
of the _Chesil Bank_ below them. But on a day of sea mist, it must be,
I felt, one of the saddest and most mournful regions in the world, with
no sound but the wail of gulls, and the chafing of the surge below.

XXVII

Canterbury Tower

To-day I had a singular pleasure heightened by an intermingled
strangeness and even terror--qualities which bring out the quality of
pleasure in the same way that a bourdon in a pedal-point passage brings
out the quality of what a German would, I think, call the _over-work_.
I was at _Canterbury_, where the great central tower is wreathed with
scaffolding, and has a dim, blurred outline from a distance, as though
it were being rapidly shaken to and fro. I found a friendly and
communicable man who offered to take me over it; we climbed a dizzy
little winding stair, with bright glimpses at intervals, through
loop-holes, of sunlight and wheeling birds; then we crept along the top
of a vaulted space with great pockets of darkness to right and left.
Soon we were in the gallery of the lantern, from which we could see the
little people crawling on the floor beneath, like slow insects. And
then we mounted a short ladder which took us out of one of the great
belfry windows, on to the lowest of the planked galleries. What a
frail and precarious structure it seemed: the planks bent beneath our
feet. And here came the first exquisite delight--that of being close
to the precipitous face of the tower, of seeing the carved work which
had never been seen close at hand since its erection except by the
jackdaws and pigeons. I was moved and touched by observing how fine
and delicate all the sculpture was. There were rows and rows of little
heraldic devices, which from below could appear only as tiny fretted
points; yet every petal of rose or _fleur-de-lys_ was as scrupulously
and cleanly cut as if it had been meant to be seen close at hand; a
waste of power, I suppose; but what a pretty and delicate waste! and
done, I felt, in faithful days, when the carving was done as much to
delight, if possible, the eye of God, as to please the eye of man.
Higher and higher we went, till at last we reached the parapet. And
then by a dizzy perpendicular ladde