But to-day it will be the city, lying at our feet to the westward, which will interest us, and there will be nothing on the hill to turn our attention from it as we note its chief points one by one. It is a beautiful picture of mingled red and grey that lies before us. The Cathedral--a mass of grey stone--here presents its most interesting aspect to us: a mass of grey stone set with pinnacles and flying buttresses and heavy square tower. To its left lies the College, hidden partly behind the trees of the Close and the Deanery garden, the light, graceful ‘Two Wardens’ tower of its chapel contrasting strikingly with the solid tower of the Cathedral--a noticeable and attractive object. Almost between the two lies a green patch of meadow, with grey walls and ruins round it. This is Wolvesey, with its memories of Alfred and the English Chronicle. Beyond Wolvesey and the College we shall see St. Cross, like the Cathedral in outward form, but a cathedral in miniature. Close at our feet in the foreground lie the Guildhall, with its clock, and the statue of the great Alfred, and the line of the High Street can be clearly followed till it terminates with the West Gate at its far extremity. On either side of the city are seen the many channels of the river Itchen--here and there rises the tower or spire of one of the numerous city churches--and far away on the high ground to the left appears a clump of trees which, under the name of ‘Oliver’s Battery,’ recalls the thought of the grim Lord Protector to us. It is a pleasant and, indeed, poetic picture at any period of the year, and perhaps most poetic on an afternoon in late autumn, when the [Illustration: ST. CATHERINE’S HILL, WINCHESTER The fine bold chalk hill which dominates the river valley to the South of Winchester, has memories of early Celtic days, of Cnut, and of the _ancien régime_ at Winchester College. Round its summit is the ‘ring’ of the great refuge camp of præ-Roman days which it is estimated required some 3000 people to defend it. Cnut made a grant of ‘Hille’ and other lands to the old minster. On the summit there was once a pilgrimage chapel dedicated to St. Catherine. St. Catherine’s Hill was formerly the playing area for College boys on ‘remedies’ or holidays, and the curious ‘mismaze’ cut on its summit is supposed to have been their handiwork.] light smoke from the houses and the thin mists from the river have mingled together to weave a silvery grey network, through which the details of the city seem, as it were, to filter slowly and dreamily--a harmony of haze and mist, to which the imagination can most sympathetically attune itself, a vague dreamland scene which fancy seems almost naturally to repeople with the shadows of the past. CHAPTER II EARLY DAYS Et penitus toto orbe divisos Britannos.