of shrubbery.  The episcopal palace is a stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing on its front the figures of 1687, as the date of its erection.  A large edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the residence of the second dignitary of the cathedral; and in that case it must have been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lichfield.  I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, from which and the interior lawns it is separated by an open-work iron fence, lined with rich old shrubbery, and overarched by a minster-aisle of venerable trees.

Winchester [Footnote:  From “Visits to Remarkable Places.”]

BY WILLIAM HOWITT

On entering the cathedral enclosure on its north side from High Street, you are at once struck with the venerable majesty and antique beauty of the fine old pile before you, and with the sacred quietude of the enclosure itself.  In the heart of this tranquil city it has yet a deeper tranquillity of its own.  Its numerous tombs and headstones, scattered over its greensward, and its lofty avenues of limetrees, seem to give you a peaceful welcome to the Christian fame and resting-place of so many generations.  If you enter at the central passage, you tread at once on the eastern foundations of the Conqueror’s palace, and pass close to the spot on which formerly rose the western towers of Alfred’s Newan Mynstre, and where lay his remains, after having been removed from the old mynstre, till Hyde Abbey was built.

It is impossible to walk over this ground, now so peaceful, without calling to mind what scenes of havoc and blood, of triumph and ecclesiastical pomp, it has witnessed—­the butchery of the persecution of Diocletian, when the Christians fell here by thousands; the repeated massacres and conflagrations of the Danes; the crowning of Saxon and of English kings; the proud processions of kings and queens, nobles, mitered prelates, friars, and monks, to offer thanksgivings for victory, or penance for sins, from age to age; and, finally, the stern visitation of the Reformers and the Cromwellian troopers.

The venerable minster itself bears on its aspect the testimonies of its own antiquity.  The short and massy tower in the center, the work of Bishop Walkelin, the cousin of the Conqueror, has the very look of that distant age, and, to eyes accustomed to the lofty and rich towers of some of our cathedrals, has an air of meanness.  Many people tell you that it never was finished; but besides that there is no more reason that the tower should remain unfinished through so many centuries than any other part of the building, we know that it was the character of the time, of which the tower of the Norman church of St. Cross affords another instance just at hand.  In fact, the spire was then unknown.