At first entrance to it, Canterbury does not impress with its antiquity; there are, indeed, the ancient Cathedral, ancient gates and ancient houses. But as the sights of the city grow familiar, as its atmosphere enters into our souls, as its story becomes known, gradually and surely we realise that most of what we see now is but youthful compared with the great age of the place; and we feel that when all this of the present day has mouldered to dust, as must all man’s works, here will be another city, perhaps even fairer than the one we are looking on, and that the men of those days to come will wonder and speculate as to the likeness of us of to-day. Canterbury is ancient and beautiful; no place for the mere tourist who fancies that in an hour or two of sight-seeing he can learn to know and love her: she is like a beautiful woman, whose charms never stale; like a good woman, ever showing to those who love her some fresh enchantment. But it is not history--not the story of dead events--that chiefly fascinates us in Canterbury, or, indeed, in any such city; it is the lives of the men who made that history, who took part in those events. Here, as we walk the streets, we think of Augustine, of Thomas, of the Black Prince, of many another; and of many great men of letters--Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe, Thackeray, Dickens, Stanley: the first painting for us the Canterbury of his own days, the last that of past times. To understand fully the beauty of such a place, we must allow not only its spirit to enter into us, but we must in our mind’s eyes people its ways with those who have walked there aforetime, with the shadows not of the great only but of the humble, who all in their degree helped to the making of history and of this historic city.