on entering other religious houses. This is due,
first, to the vast size of the interior, the immense length of the nave,
and the unobstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the
"vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen--an act for which I
bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to the comparatively
small amount of stained glass there is to intercept the light. So
graceful and beautiful is the interior that it can bear the light, and
light suits it best, just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester
and other cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at a
building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a palace
in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands but brought into
existence by a miracle.

I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long lest it
should compel me to stay there always or cause me to feel dissatisfied
and homesick when away.

But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had not
expected to be won by any building made by man; and from the inside I
would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature had
come more to man's aid.

Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time to time
at the vast building and its various delicate shades of colour, I asked
myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose away from it most of the
time, now on the trees, then on the turf, and again on some one walking
there--why, in fact, I allowed myself only an occasional glance at the
object I was there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had never
put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.

We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of
the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only
fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is
quickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately
smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of
failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago.

There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the sensation can
be renewed in its first freshness. Now it is the same, though in a
less degree, with the more important sense of sight. We look long and
steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we look
the better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic
pleasure cannot be increased or retained in th