PREFACE. "The land's antiquities are the most singular beauty in every nation."-Weever. LOCAL Handbooks and Guides abound in minute details, are diffuse and prolix in description, and indulge in a natural and pardonable partiality for the great ornament of each particular city. To the inhabitant these qualities enhance their value, while they in no small degree detract from the convenience of the stranger, who requires merely the notice of salient peculiarities in the fabric, and that enlarged acquaintance with other churches, which insures a careful comparison of their similarities, and an accurate indication of the points of difference. Price and portability likewise enter into consideration: while it is difficult to make a choice, and discriminate between the frequently conflicting claims of the various works proffered to the visitors by the several publishers in each city. The attempt has now been made to produce a terse, clear, and faithful companion, based on the most trustworthy and recent authorities, which will point out those objects only which are most worthy of observation. It has long been a subject of just reproach to English people, that, while foreigners seldom visit this country who have not first explored the galleries of art, studied the pictures and sculptures, and rendered themselves familiar with the architectural treasures of their native land, our wanderers along the ruin-clad shores of the Rhine, under the eye-blinding snow-capped Jura and St. Bernard, beneath the broad burning skies of Italy, among the churches and through the corridors of the richly-stored capitals of the Continent, the museums of Dresden, the frescoes of Munich, over the Sierras of Spain, and in the distant Syria and Egypt, display a most unpatriotic ignorance with regard to the noblest structures and fairest scenes at home. Southey relates that he heard more than one American avow that it was worth while to cross the Atlantic to see one of our Cathedrals. Art, science, factory, and harbour, were common to the old and new world, but a church with memories was a novelty; it was worthy of a pilgrimage to tread the hallowed pavements of a structure built upon the resting-place of saints, and in which the sacrifices of religion had been offered from time immemorial, in a city purely religious in its interest, influence, aspect, and character. Those to whom these Cathedrals and solemn chants are familiar from childhood, cannot appreciate the anxiety with which a stranger takes his first glimpse of the building, lest the reality should fall short of his anticipation, or the glow of wonderment with which he is filled, while he gradually learns the munificence and marvels of the undertaking, the grandeur of conception, the difficulty of execution, and the durability of works so enormous. Neither can it be forgotten, that under the shadow of these Houses of Prayer was set up the chair of the Master. They were for centuries the fortresses of religion-homes of the science and art of dark, rude ages; they garnered in their libraries, and multiplied with patient toil the MSS. which make the grand literature of our own times-the Chronicles, the Classics, the Fathers of Theology, and, above all, the sacred Word of God. They were schools of music, science, and art, the almonries of the poor, the seclusion of the penitent, the centres of dependent parish churches built on their granges, and served from their cells; their vineyards and farms were models of agriculture; they were the hostelries of the traveller, the barrier between the delays and assaults of feudal ignorance and the advance of civilization; the sanctuaries of the oppressed and fugitive in lawless ages. Their industrious tenants formed the road built the bridge, reclaimed the fen, and supplanted' the forest with human dwellings. And now, while we reap the rich harvest of labours, sacrifice, and devotion, which animated the benevolence, and drew forth those alms of the faithful which render them autographs of the past and national heirlooms, these survive as visible, sterling, incorruptible witnesses, while all else has passed away-the lives, hopes, powers, discomfitures, dreams, sorrows, and endurance of the builders,-the indisputable evidence of their spirit of veneration, love, and desire to glorify the Eternal upon the earth, displayed in the obscurest corners, in the corbels of the darkest newel, and on the summit of the loftiest spire, where access is scarcely possible, which yet show as much care and finish as the noblest features open to the eyes of a multitude. "Gothic architecture," says a great writer, "unites an exquisite delicacy and inconceivable skill in mechanical execution with the grand, the boundless, the infinite, concentrated in the idea of an entire fabric; a rare and truly beautiful combination of contrasting elements conceived by the power of human intellect, and aiming at faultless perfection in the minutest details, as well as in the lofty grandeur and comprehensiveness of the general design. A church is intended to symbolize in miniature the eternal structure of the spiritual church in Heaven." It is an era of better taste than the miserable reign of the revived Classic style, when Sir Christopher Wren sneered at Gothic art, Fenelon compared a vicious style of rhetoric to its ornament, even old Bishop Tanner, antiquary as he was, qualified his acknowledgment of them as "noble buildings" by adding, "though not actually so grand and neat as Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals." Gray, passing through York, merely mentions that walnuts were cheap; Horace Walpole quietly speaks of Bristol Cathedral as "very neat, and has pretty tombs;" of Worcester, "it is very pretty, and has several tombs (the diaper of one is commended because it served as the pattern of his staircase-paper at Strawberry Hill), "and clusters of light Derbyshire marble lately cleaned." Gloucester has no higher commendation than this: "The outside of the Cathedral is beautifully light; the pillars in the nave outrageously plump and heavy. Kent designed the screen." "To me," said Schlegel, "the sight of a splendid edifice is an ever-springing source of pleasure: I feel its grandeur more, and feel its beauty better the more frequently I behold it. The continual contemplation of a fine building unconsciously elevates a susceptible mind, and maintains it in a fit frame for appreciating the beauty of other works of art, while a taste for architecture seems, indeed, to form the basis of every other artistic taste." Our readers will readily recall the well-known lines of Milton on surveying a Cathedral; or the fine expression of Coleridge-"I am filled with devotion and with awe; I am lost to the actualities that surround me, and my whole being swells into the Infinite earth and air, nature and art, all swell up into Eternity; and the only sensible impression left is, I am nothing." May ne'er That true succession fail of English hearts, |