The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of OldHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs; Portsmouth Road (England)
Beside the keep there remains but one archway of all the extensive
military works that at one time surrounded the Castle. This is in Quarry
Street, and is known as Castle Arch. The chalk caverns close at hand, and
the vaulted crypt beneath the "Angel," although they have long been looked
upon as dungeons, had, according to the best-informed of local
archæologists, no connection whatever with the Castle. Perhaps even before
the Castle keep, the delightfully quaint old Guildhall is the most
characteristic feature of Guildford's architecture. Compared with that old
stronghold, the Guildhall is the merest _parvenu_, having been built in
1683; but, comparisons of age apart, there is no parallel to be drawn
between the two. The old tower is four-square and stern, with only the
picturesqueness that romance can find, while the belfried tower and the
boldly-projecting clock that impends massively over the pavements of the
High Street, and gives the time o' day to the good folks of the town, are
the pride of the eye and the delight of the artistic sense of all them
that know how to appreciate at their true æsthetic value those memorials
of the old corporate spirit of business and good-fellowship that have long
since vanished from municipal practice. The legend that may still be read
upon the Corporation mace, of Elizabethan date, is earnest of this
old-time amity. Thus it runs: "Fayre God. Doe Justice. Love thy Brether."
Set against this, the proceedings of the Kingston-upon-Thames Town Council
of some few weeks back make ugly reading, and at the same time illustrate
the new spirit very vividly indeed. You who list to learn may read in the
records for the present year of that old borough, that while one member
of the Council stigmatized another member's statements as falsehoods, the
first rejoined that his accuser was, in plain English, "a liar." Appealed
to by the Mayor to withdraw the offensive expression, he refused, and the
Mayor and Corporation filed out of the Council-chamber, leaving him to his
own reflections.
That the burghers of Guildford were always the best of friends one with
another is not my contention; that the dignity of their ancient
surroundings should conduce to loving-kindness may remain unquestioned.
XVI
[Sidenote: _GEORGE ABBOT_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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