ly built,
spacious and clean county capital that would be of interest and
attraction if there were no glorious cathedral to grace and adorn it.
As a matter of fact, cathedral towns away from the immediate precincts
suffer from the overshadowing character of the great churches, that
take most of the honour and glory to themselves. This is, of course
but right, and the discerning traveller will keep the even balance
between the human interest of court and alley and market place and the
awed reverence that must be felt by the most materialistic of us when
we come within the immediate influence of these solemn sanctuaries, of
which Salisbury is the most perfect in the land.

[Illustration: OLD SARUM.]

It is impossible to give the merest outline of the history of
Salisbury without first referring to that of Old Sarum, or
Sorbiodunum, two miles to the north. The huge mound on the edge of the
Plain was doubtless a prehistoric fortress, though of a much simpler
form than the three-terraced enclosure of twenty-seven acres that we
see there to-day. In Roman times the importance of this advanced
outpost of chalk, commanding the approach to the lower valley of the
Avon, would be appreciated. But it would appear from recent
investigations that little was done to elaborate the defences.
Nevertheless Sorbiodunum was an important Roman town and stood on the
junction of two great thoroughfares--the Icknield Way and the Port
Way. The recent excavations, interfered with to a large extent by the
late war, have been so disappointing in the lack of Roman relics that
a suggestion has been made by Sir W.H. St. John Hope that the true
site of the Roman town may have been at Stratford, just below the
mound to the north-west. It is possible that further excavations will
settle the question.

After the Saxon invasion, Sarobyrig, as it was then called, probably
assumed its present outline so far as the foundation of the walls are
concerned. That a mint of Canute (who according to one tradition, died
here and not at Shaftesbury) and again of Edward Confessor was set up,
and that the town became the seat of the Bishop of Sherborne, was a
proof of its established importance. The smaller central mound of the
citadel itself would appear to have been a work of the Normans, who
divided the space occupied within the outer defences into two parts;
that on the east belonging to the military works, and the western half
pertaining to the Bishop and having