Of all the places I visited in England, not excluding Oxford, I believe that Canterbury pleased me most. The day may have had something to do with it. It was warm and gray--threatening rain at times--but at times also the sun came out and gave the old English town a glow which was not unrelated to spring and Paradise. You will have to have a fondness for things English to like it--quaint, two-story houses with unexpected twists to their roofs, and oriel and bay windows which have been fastened on in the most unexpected places and in the strangest fashion. The colors, too, in some instances, are high for England--reds and yellows and blues; but in the main a smoky red-brick tone prevails. The river Stour, which in America would be known as Stour’s Creek, runs through the city in two branches; and you find it in odd places, walled in closely by the buildings, hung over by little balconies and doorsteps, the like of which I did not see again until I reached Venice. There were rooks in the sky, as I noticed, when I came out of the railway station; I was charmed with winding streets, and a general air of peace and quiet--but I could not descry the cathedral anywhere. I made my way up High Street--which is English for “Main”--and finally found my recommended inn, small and dark, but in the hands of Frenchmen and consequently well furnished in the matter of food. I came out after a time and followed this street to its end, passing the famous gate where the pilgrims used to sink on their knees and in that position pray their way to the cathedral. As usual my Baedeker gave me a world of information, but I could not stomach it, and preferred to look at the old stones of which the gate was composed, wondering that it had endured so long. The little that I knew of St. Augustine and King Ethelbert and Chaucer and Thomas à Becket and Laud came back to me. I could not have called it sacred ground, but it was colored at least with the romance of history, and I have great respect for what people once believed, whether it was sensible or not.