400 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



chain and bit of bread have meant 1 Had they dangled in 

 the remote past over some northern Ugolino ? or did they 

 form in their dark narrow cell, without air-hole or outlet, 

 merely some of the reserve terrors of the Cathedral, efficient 

 in bending to the authority of the Church the rebellious monk 

 or refractory nun ? Ere quitting the building, I scaled the 

 great tower, considerably less tall, it is said, than its pre- 

 decessor, which was destroyed by lightning about two hundred 

 years ago, but quite tall enough to command 'an extensive, 

 and, though bare, not unimpressive prospect. Two arms of 

 the sea, that cut so deeply into the mainland on its opposite 

 sides as to narrow it into a flat neck little more than a mile 

 and a half in breadth, stretch away in long vista, the one to 

 the south, and the other to the north ; and so immediately 

 is the Cathedral perched on the isthmus between, as to be 

 nearly equally conspicuous from both. It forms in each, to 

 the inward-bound vessel, the terminal object in the landscape. 

 There was not much to admire in the town immediately be- 

 neath, with its roofs of gray slate, almost the only parts of 

 it visible from this point of view, and its bare treeless sub- 

 urbs ; nor yet in the tract of mingled hill and moor on either 

 hand, into which the island expands from the narrow neck, 

 like the two ends of a sand-glass ; but the long withdraw- 

 ing ocean-avenues between, that seemed approaching from 

 south and north to kiss the feet of the proud Cathedral, 

 avenues here and there enlivened on their ground of deep 

 blue by a sail, and fringed on the lee for the wind blew 

 freshly in the clear sunshine with their border of dazzling 

 white, were objects worth while climbing the tower to see. 

 Ere my descent, my guide hammered out of the tower-bells, 

 on my special behalf, somewhat, I daresay, to the astonish- 

 ment of the burghers below, a set of chimes handed down en- 

 tire, in all the notes, from the times of the monks, from which 

 also the four fine bells of the Cathedral have descended as an 



