er the beautiful enclosure.
We were hospitably entreated, and listened to many an historical tale of
tomb and stone and grassy nook; but under all we were listening to the
heart of our companion, who had so often wandered thither in his
solitude, and was now rereading the stories these urns had prepared for
him.

During one of his winter visits, he says (in "Copperfield"):--

"Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober
pleasure that calmed my spirits and eased my heart. There were the old
signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It
appeared so long since I had been a school-boy there, that I wondered
the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I was
changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was
inseparable in my mind from Agnes seemed to pervade even the city where
she dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and
rooks, whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence
would have done; the battered gateways, once stuck full with statues,
long thrown down and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who
had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of
centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses;
the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden;--everywhere, in
everything, I felt the same serene air, the same calm, thoughtful,
softening spirit."

Walking away and leaving Canterbury behind us forever, we came again
into the voiceless streets, past a "very old house bulging out over the
road, ... quite spotless in its cleanliness, the old-fashioned brass
knocker on the low, arched door ornamented with carved garlands of fruit
and flowers, twinkling like a star," the very house, perhaps, "with
angles and corners and carvings and mouldings," where David Copperfield
was sent to school. We were turned off with a laughing reply, when we
ventured to accuse this particular house of being _the one_, and were
told there were several that "would do"; which was quite true, for
nothing could be more quaint, more satisfactory to all, from the lovers
of Chaucer to the lovers of Dickens, than this same city of Canterbury.
The sun had set as we rattled noisily out of the ancient place that
afternoon, and along the high road, which was quite novel in its evening
aspect. There was no lingering now; on and on we went, the postilions
flying up and down on the backs of the