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 



