We cheerfully paid our fee and went down into the grand old crypt, now full one thousand years old. Indescribable are the sensations experienced and the emotions awakened as one is here. The place is but dimly lighted, and there are antique and grotesque columns and arches, solid, prison-like masonry, and groined ceilings of stone. It is not hard to imagine the former sound of sandal-footed monks or nuns, of subdued voices engaged in prayer,--to know of the odor of incense, wandering about the columns and arches as it did of old. All is solid, fortress-like, and secure; but in spite of solidity and thick stone walls, the aspirations of monks and nuns went out through them, for their prayers were not confined. Centuries now are gone since their spirits went out of their bodies, and the custom even of their service here came to an end. The new dispensation has come, "a better covenant, established on better promises." The race has advanced; and now, nought but the grand and vast light room above, the incense of an intelligent devotion, and the music of the great organ can render the desired aids to devotion. We find here a superb reminder of a vast antiquity, in a piece of Saxon work in stone, of the _herring-bone_ pattern. This was part of an ancient Saxon church, built before the visit of the Normans. Do we comprehend the fact? No. We believe the story, and admire the place; and next, as best we can, we try and know the thing as no one can know it for us, but with only partial success. At the rear of the altar is the tomb and monument of Tobias Matthew, one of the early translators of the Bible into the English language, who was the author of the address, or preface, to the King James translation in present use. The chapter-house is entered from the north transept, and is a room of remarkable elegance. All is of course built of stone. The ceiling is strangely elaborate, and there is a wainscot around the room, at the top of which is elegant flower and leaf work, and vines, with a profusion of grotesque figures of nondescript animals. At the right side of the choir is a chapel, in which are kept a few things of unusual interest. Here is a Bible and Prayer Book, presented by Charles I. to the cathedral; also a copy of the Bible, in two large folio volumes, given by Charles II. Next, we have a fine old chair in which sat at their coronation all the Saxon kings. There is also a silver crozier of seven pounds' weight, and 200 years old. As at Durham, here also are exhibited gold seal-rings once worn by bishops, and each is nearly or quite seven hundred years old.