Rambles in an Old City: comprising antiquarian, historical, biographical and political associations — John Shaqi
Rambles in an Old City: comprising antiquarian, historical, biographical and political associationsMadders, Susan Swain
History
Rambles in an Old City: comprising antiquarian, historical, biographical and political associations
Madders, Susan Swain
Norwich (England)
fair frontings to modern streets or road-ways, too often form but outer
coatings of decency to masses of corruption hidden away in close yards,
courts, and alleys, at their back—church towers, and spires, and turrets
in manifold variety and abundance; and prominent among the host, stands
out in all the glory of hale old age, fine old St Peter’s, looking down
from his proud eminence in solemn dignity, and smiling at all the feeble
efforts of the mushrooms clinging to his very base to hide his fair
proportions; far and wide may we look to find his peer, even among such
gems of beauty as the patron saints so lavishly have scattered among the
lanes and thoroughfares of this very garden of churches. Such are the
city features of the panoramic see; turning to another point of view,
away, beyond the foreground of the sheep and cattle pens that bespeak the
conversion of the ancient inner ballium into a modern market-place for
live stock, and across the deep running channel laden with crafts not yet
wholly superseded in their labours by steam—that infant Hercules, whose
leading-strings are compassing the surface of the globe—we catch a glance
of the hanging woods of the fairest village our Norfolk scenery may
boast, whose Richmond-like gardens skirting the pathway of the winding
river, and meadow lands beyond, dotted here and there by the alder cars
that once gave a name to the Benedictine convent close by, form a
landscape of mingled animation and quiet rural beauty, not often to be
equalled in the suburbs of a manufacturing city. No marvel why gala
spots for pleasure-loving citizens should be found interspersed among the
more refined parterres of the wealthy upon the shores; no marvel that a
summer’s evening should witness crowds of holiday-seeking folks,
thronging to taste the sweets of fresh air, and rest from labour, in the
midst of so fair a scene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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