As the solemn twilight was coming on, I visited the cathedral. I had not promised myself much from such a visit, for ’tis a mutilated pile, of which the entire nave is lacking. Yet, whether it was the effect of the dim and dying daylight, or whether the architecture and the sepulchral charms of the holy place overpowered me, I left it with the profoundest impressions of awe and tender emotion. The old Norman Chapter-house is an architectural gem, with its intersecting arcades, its rich diapering, and nail-head ornaments, its twisted mouldings, and spiral columns, and the zig-zag groinings of its roof. In the vestry I was shown a curious Saxon carving of Christ saving a soul. My attention was also directed, by the sub-sacrist who attended me, to the ruins of the Bishop’s palace, which fell under the violence of the mob, in 1831, when good Bishop Gray so beautifully distinguished himself and his Order, by exhibiting an apostolic harmony of meekness and resolution. But it was in walking the aisles of the cathedral itself, under the deepening shadows of the evening, that I experienced the full effects which such a place should inspire. From the old and decaying monuments of knights and their dames, I passed with elevated feeling to the modern achievements of Bacon and of Chantry. A kneeling female figure, reflecting the faint light from its pale features and white drapery, and standing out of the darkness, like a pure soul emerging from the valley of the shadow of death, gave me a sensation of unspeakable reverence. Hard by, a chequered day-beam played on the fine outline of a bust of Robert Southey, and this apparition also affected me; but when I came to the little tablet which marks the grave of Mrs. Mason, and spelt out, word by word, the incomparable tribute of conjugal love which it bears, I was overwhelmed; and as I read (I am not ashamed to own it) my tears dropped upon the marble floor. There was barely daylight enough for the effort, but I had known the poem from my earliest childhood, and possibly to this fact I must attribute its overpowering effect upon my feelings. It is to be condemned perhaps as an epitaph; but who can think of criticism when borne along on such a tide of heavenly affection and triumphant faith? I trembled to think I was standing upon the relics of so much loveliness and purity. “Take, holy earth, all that my soul holds dear!” She must have been an angel, to have inspired so much feeling as agony has compressed into that one line! and then, what an image of more than mortal beauty rises before us as we read— “Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine, Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.” And did ever love paint such a portrait, in a few touches of passionate apostrophe, as in those in which the heart of her husband speaks on?