We "go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely turning and turning, and lowering [our] heads to avoid the stairs above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist." About ninety steps bring us on to the roof of the Cathedral over the choir, and then, keeping along a passage by the parapet, we reach the belfry, and from thence go on by ladder to the bell-chamber, which contains six bells--dark--very--long ladders--trap-doors--very heavy--almost extinguish us when lowering them--more ladders from bell-chamber to roof of tower. The parapet of the tower is very high; we can just see over it when standing on a narrow ledge near the top-coping of the leaded roof. There are a number of curious carved heads on the pinnacles of the tower, and the parapet, to our surprise, appears to be about the same height as the top of the Castle Keep. A panoramic view of Cloisterham presents itself to our view (alas! not by moonlight, as in the story), "its ruined habitations and sanctuaries of the dead at the tower's base; its moss-softened, red-tiled roofs and red-brick houses of the living, clustered beyond." We are anxious to go round the triforium, but there is no passage through the arches; it was closed, we are told, at the time of the restoration, about fifteen years ago, when the walls of the Cathedral were pinned for safety. The verger, on being asked, said he did not call to mind that Dickens ever went round the triforium or ascended the tower. If this is so, then much of the wonderful description of that "unaccountable sort of expedition," in the twelfth chapter of _Edwin Drood_, must have been written from imagination. As it is Sunday, and as the summer is nearly over, Mr. Miles, with a feeling akin to that which George Eliot has expressed regarding imperfect work:-- "but God be praised, Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true,"-- apologetically explains that one-half the choir are absent on leave, and perhaps we shall not have the musical portion of the service conducted with that degree of efficiency which, as visitors, we may have expected. Nevertheless we attend the afternoon service; and Mendelssohn's glorious anthem, "If with all your hearts," appeals to us with enhanced effect, from the exquisite rendering of it by the gifted pure tenor who takes the solo, followed by the delicate harmonies of the choir, as the sound waves carry them upwards through and around the arches, and from the sublime emotions called into being by the impassioned appeal of the Hebrew prophet.