NATURE IN ENGLAND 13 



are only impressive sepulchres, tombs within a 

 tomb. Your own footfalls seem like the echo of 

 past ages. These cathedrals belong to the pleisto- 

 cene period of man's religious history, the period 

 of gigantic forms. How vast, how monstrous, how 

 terrible in beauty and power! but in our day as 

 empty and dead as the shells upon the shore. The 

 cold, thin ecclesiasticism that now masquerades in 

 them hardly disturbs the dust in their central aisles. 

 I saw five worshipers at the choral service in Can- 

 terbury, and about the same number of curious 

 spectators. For my part, I could not take my eyes 

 off the remnants of some of the old stained windows 

 up aloft. If I worshiped at all, it was my devout 

 admiration of those superb relics. There could be 

 no doubt about the faith that inspired those. Be- 

 low them were some gorgeous modern memorial 

 windows: stained glass, indeed! loud, garish, thin, 

 painty; while these were like a combination of pre- 

 cious stones and gems, full of depth and richness of 

 tone, and, above all, serious, not courting your 

 attention. My eye was not much taken with them 

 at first, and not till after it had recoiled from the 

 hard, thin glare in my immediate front. 



From Canterbury I went to Dover, and spent 

 part of a day walking along the cliffs to Folkestone. 

 There is a good footpath that skirts the edge of the 

 cliffs, and it is much frequented. It is character- 

 istic of the compactness and neatness of this little 

 island, that there is not an inch of waste land along 

 this sea margin; the fertile rolling landscape, ^vav- 



