The external beauties of Canterbury Cathedral can best be viewed in their entirety from a distance. The old town has nestled in close under the walls of the church that dominates it, preventing anything like a complete view of the building from the immediate precincts. But Canterbury is girt with a ring of hills, from which we may enjoy a strikingly beautiful view of the ancient city, lying asleep in the rich, peaceful valley of the Stour, and the mighty cathedral towering over the red-tiled roofs of the town, and looking, as a rustic remarked as he gazed down upon it "like a hen brooding over her chickens." Erasmus must have been struck by some such aspect of the cathedral, for he says, "It rears its crest (_erigit se_) with so great majesty to the sky, that it inspires a feeling of awe even in those who look at it from afar." Such a view may well be got from the hills of Harbledown, a village about two miles from Canterbury, containing in itself many objects of antiquarian and aesthetic interest. It stands on the road by which Chaucer's pilgrims wended their way to the shrine of St. Thomas, and it is almost certainly referred to in the lines in which the poet speaks of "A little town Which that yeleped is Bob Up and Down Under the Blee in Canterbury way." The name Harbledown is derived by local philologists from Bob up and Down, and the hilly nature of the country fully justifies the title. Here stands Lanfranc's Lazar-house, "so picturesque even now in its decay, and in spite of modern alterations which have swept away all but the ivy-clad chapel of Lanfranc." In this hospital a shoe of St. Thomas was preserved which pilgrims were expected to kiss as they passed by; and in an old chest the modern visitor may still behold a rude money-box with a slit in the lid, into which the great Erasmus is said to have dropped a coin when he visited Canterbury at the time when St. Thomas's glory was just beginning to wane. Behind the hospital is an ancient well called "the Black Prince's Well." The Black Prince, as is well known, passed through Canterbury on his way from Sandwich to London, whither he was escorting his royal prisoner, King John of France, whom he had captured at the battle of Poitiers, A.D. 1357. We need not doubt that he halted at Harbledown to salute the martyr's shoe, and he may have washed in the water of the well, which was henceforward called by his name. Another tradition relates that he had water brought to him from this well when he lay sick, ten years later, in the archbishop's palace at Canterbury. [Illustration: VIEW ON THE STOUR.]