THE CA TFIEDRAL OLD MASONR T. 129 



that did usually went to Australia. In her neighborhood they 

 were mostly dissenters Methodists and Baptists, and, with the 

 exception of deceit to strangers, were of much better character 

 than the English laborers. They had, however, many traditional 

 superstitions. 



"We attended service in the morning at the cathedral. The 

 comparative lowness and depth of its walls, strengthened by 

 thick, rude buttresses, and its short, square massive tower, to- 

 gether 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, ungar- 

 nished grandeur, was much more imposing than the feeble grace 

 and pliant luxuriance of many more celebrated structures. The 

 raggedness of outline, the wrinkles and furrows and scars upon 

 the face of all the old masonry, are very remarkable. The mor- 

 tar 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 snow 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 demolishment, and others 

 but yesterday restored to their original lines and angles, with 

 clean-cut, bright-colored stone and mortar bad blotches, but for- 

 tunately not prominent. 



It was once connected with an abbey, and other religious 

 houses that stood near it, and by a long under-ground passage 



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