disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I
should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded
oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy
pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small colored
bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and
has not been meddled with, further than by removing the superincumbent
earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of
the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had
been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they
knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin.

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable
appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high,
peaked roofs of which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a
Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been
striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint
village-path, and for centuries before. The arch is about four hundred
yards from the Cathedral; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman
remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless
innumerable more beneath it; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation
of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that
earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a
third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if
sought for at the original depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of
Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it
could have been two thousand years ago; and though Time has gnawed it
externally, he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and
broken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers
on the projections up and down the sides.

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty
close proximity to the Cathedral; but the old gateway is obstructed by a
modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of
the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back
of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of
some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I
suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided int