CHICHESTER 261 



are, besides the cathedral, at least twenty churches 

 and chapels in this small town what are they doing 

 in the matter ? Nothing, I fear, and probably they 

 have long discovered that nothing is to be done. 

 The churches open on Sundays at an hour when the 

 seventy public-houses are closed, and a certain num- 

 ber of women and a few married men attend the 

 services. The cathedral has at least two services 

 every day, and you will as a rule find six or eight to 

 a dozen persons at the afternoon service ; and these 

 few are women, or strangers who have come in to 

 look at the building. The eloquence, if there is any, 

 the lessons, the sweet and beautiful voices singing 

 "anthems clear," are all wasted on the desert breath 

 of that vast, vacant interior. The ghostly men walk 

 the town like ghosts indeed, and are unseen or un- 

 noticed, and at an immeasurable distance from the 

 people they brush against ; and they are like pilgrims 

 and passengers in the city, whom nobody knows ; nor 

 does any one inquire who they are, and what they are 

 doing there. 



On a rainy miserable day that was market-day, 

 when the wind was cold and the streets were foul 

 with mud; and the bellowings, bleatings, and grunt- 

 ings of the animals, and the smell of the same, filled 

 the air, I, greatly suffering from "the chichesters," 

 fled into the cathedral and broke my resolution never 

 to enter that interesting part of the interior from 

 which the non-paying public, the poor undistinguished 



