The legends concerning him are among the literary treasures of the cathedral, and by reason of the traditions as well as history are not unworthily appreciated. No one dead has spoken more effectually to the living than he. His name and fame, as a great intercessor with the Almighty, were for centuries a household word. He was considered by the northern peasantry as the saint of saints, and constant, tedious, and sacrificing pilgrimages were made to his shrine. Bede says that his body was found incorrupt eleven years after burial, and that it so continued. The coffin was opened in 1827, and the corpse found to be enveloped in five silken robes. The eyes were of glass, movable by the least jar, and the hair was of a fine gold wire. These things were done by deceptive priests, who annually pretended to take or cut hair from his head, which they said grew immediately. This is not the St. Cuthbert who was a Benedictine monk, a pupil of Bede, and who attended him in his last hours, and finally wrote the memoir of his life. There was yet another Cuthbert who was Bishop of Canterbury from 740 to 758. The cathedral has but few monuments, and these are not of great interest. It is somewhat remarkable that monuments seem to prevail in some cathedrals, and that there is an absence of them in the others. Some communities then, as in our own day, appeared to consider the commemoration of the dead as a religious duty, and others to neglect the practice, or consider it hardly worthy of their attention. The places of New England burial in their respective variety of care or neglect attest this. "For thus our fathers testified,-- That he might read who ran,-- The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man." This cathedral has had a long list of bishops, and among them very distinguished men. The name Durham has an ecclesiastical charm to a churchman, and to him the phrase, "Bishop of Durham," suggests honor, dignity, and renown. Here once presided Bishop Poore, the famous architect of the cathedral of Salisbury. He was translated from that See to this, and was bishop here from 1228 to 1237, when he died; and then, in 1311, Richard Kellow was elected bishop. He brought with him an inflexible piety, but colored with the extremest humility of the cloister. He was celebrated for a steady and unflinching sense of duty. The meanest vassal shared his protection, and neither wealth nor rank could with him screen a criminal from punishment; and the proudest baron within his bishopric was once obliged to submit to the public penance imposed by a humble ecclesiastic, who, without forgetting his duties, made the imposition, and was sustained by Kellow.