You Canterbury By Kate Fisher Kimball OU are making your first visit to Canterbury, and instead of entering the town by the prosaic method of the railway, you are coming in by the famous old Pilgrim's way, the road from London over which Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims traveled "The holy blisful martir for to seke." About a mile and a half from Canterbury lies the little village of Harbledown, in the quaint language of Chaucer's day "a litel town Which that y-cleped is Bob-up-and-down The road, true to its name, drops into a valley just before you reach the village, then rises sharply and as you come over the crest of the hill, you get your first view of Canterbury and its noble cathedral, the Mother Church not only of England, but of all English speaking peoples. Canterbury lies in a hollow encircled by low hills, and the red roofs of the picturesque old town make a rich setting for the soft gray stone of the cathedral which towers above them. You can imagine what this glimpse of the sacred city meant to the Canterbury Pilgrims though the building which you see is far goodlier than that which they beheld with its glittering Angel Steeple. The old steeple is gone and instead rises. the majestic central tower, the most perfect Gothic struc ture in all England. The two lower western towers in the foreground are quite different in form from their peerless companion and seem to emphasize its faultless proportions. It was at this point that Henry II, in 1174, on his way to humiliate himself at the shrine of Becket, dismounted from his horse and walked some distance to the Church of St. Dunstan where he changed his ordinary dress for the garb of a penitent and from there traveled barefoot into the town. As you approach the city, you are confronted with the huge bulk of the old West Gate, for Canterbury was a walled city back in prehistoric times. The West Gate has a pedigree not to be lightly regarded. Repaired in Roman times and rebuilt again in 1380 it has frowned down upon Roman and Saxon, Dane and Englishman. Its earliest written record tells of the mighty procession accompanying Canute the Dane who brought back the body of the martyred Archbishop Alphege to the Cathedral from which viking hands had torn him. The royal visitor left his crown of gold at the high altar to atone for the sins of his lawless subjects. Coming down High Street from the West Gate you turn into little old narrow Mercery Lane and as you glance ahead you see one of the most artistic bits of old Canterbury. At the end of the narrow lane rises the beautiful gateway leading into the Cathedral precincts. It has stood there since 1517 and its grim Norman predecessor for centuries before it. The gateway could tell many a tale of pageants, for the history of Canterbury is the story of the making of England, and her ancient shrines and powerful archbishops wielded an enormous influence from British times to the Reformation. Before you enter the gateway you must make a short excursion to get the best possible historic setting for your visit to the Cathedral, first to the tiny church of St. Martin, the oldest church in England, on the site of the chapel where St. Augustine in 597 baptized his first English convert, the Saxon King Ethelbert. The King was a little suspicious of |