west end, adjoining to the singing-school and the
cloister; the precentor's house is at the east end, near the Lady
Chapel. The vicars-choral have a close of their own adjoining to the
north-east corner of the canons' close, with a bridge across through
the gate-house into the north transept; they were a collegiate body,
with their own chapel, library, and hall." One need only add that all
these sentences can still, with one exception, be read in the present
tense to show that Wells possesses a beauty and interest which gives
it an unique place among cathedral foundations. There is no other
cathedral city in which so many of the old ecclesiastical buildings
remain, or on which the modern world has made so little impression.
The church itself, in Fergusson's opinion perhaps the most beautiful,
though one of the smallest in England, is but one part of a "group of
buildings, which," wrote Professor Freeman, "as far as I know, has no
rival, either in our own island or beyond the sea." The little city to
which these buildings belong is itself worthy of them, almost a part
of them, so quiet and venerable is it, so picturesque in its lovely
setting of green hills.

Were size the main distinction of a church, Wells would sink
comfortably into the second class; even in some of its best features
it has many rivals, but the peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies (to
quote again from Freeman's _History_) "in the union and harmonious
grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither
crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those
buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace,
cloister, Lady Chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one
indivisible whole. The series goes on uninterruptedly along that
unique bridge, which, by a marvel of ingenuity, connects the church
itself with the most perfect of buildings of its own class, the
matchless vicars' close. Scattered around we see here and there an
ancient house, its gable, its windows, or its turret, falling in with
the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in
producing the general harmony of all." Thus, in the first place, the
group of buildings must be looked at as a whole from the north, from
the east, from the south-east; then the superb, unrivalled picture
from the rising ground on the Shepton Mallet road,[1] outside the
city, must be seen, and, when this little journey has been made, the
most hurried visit