THE CATHEDRAL. OLD MASONRY. 151 



usually went to Australia, she thought. In her neighbourhood 

 they were mostly dissenters ; Methodists, and Baptists, and 

 with the exception of deceit to strangers, were of good moral 

 character, much better than the English labourers. They 

 had, however, many traditional superstitions. 



We attended service in the morning at the cathedral. 

 Its outline upon the ground is, with some irregularities, in 

 the form of a cross. Its great breadths and lengths, the com 

 parative lowness and depth of its walls, strengthened by thick, 

 rude buttresses, and its short square massive tower, together 

 with its general time-worn aspect, impressed me much as an 

 expression of enduring, self-sustaining age. Like the stalwart 

 trunk of a very old oak, stripped by the tempests of much of 

 the burden of its over-luxuriant youth, its settled, compact, 

 ungamished grandeur, was vastly more imposing than the 

 feeble grace and pliant luxuriance of more succulent struc 

 tures. The raggedness of outline, the wrinkles and furrows 

 and scars upon the face of all the old masonry, are very re 

 markable. The mortar has all fallen from the outside, and 

 the edges of the stones are worn off deeply, but irregularly, 

 as they vary in texture or are differently exposed. The 

 effect of rain and snaw and frost, and mossy vegetation and 

 coal smoke, for six hundred years upon the surface, I know 

 of no building in America that would give you an idea of. 

 The material of construction is a brown stone, originally 

 lighter than our Portland sandstone, but now darker than I 

 have ever seen that become. It has had various repairs at 

 long intervals of time, and is consequently in various stages 

 of approach to ruin some small parts, not noticeable in a 

 cursory view, being in complete and irreparable demolish- 

 in ent, and others but yesterday restored to their original 

 lines and angles, with clean-cut, bright-coloured stone and 

 mortar bad blotches, but fortunately not prominent. 



