the new religion and stipulated that Augustine should remain on the Isle of Thanet, where he had landed, until after their first meeting which was to be held in the open air secure from the danger of magic spells!

The frank attitude of Augustine appealed to the equally sturdy character of Ethelbert, whose Queen, Bertha, a French princess, had brought her own Christian bishop from France and had already established service in a small chapel outside the city walls, once used by the earlier British Christians, and named by her for St. Martin of Tours. Within the present church which retains in its walls some of the old Roman bricks, you find an ancient Saxon font where, presumably, the Saxon King was baptized on June 2, 597. Such traditions are to be doubted but the font is unquestionably very old and fitly commemorates the momentous event which brought Christianity into England. Ethelbert next presented Augustine with a neighboring Saxon temple

which was speedily dedicated to St. Pancras and became a center for public worship. Later the King granted a large tract of land for an Abbey where the new religion might establish a monastery and school. And so St. Augustine's Abbey became England's venerated Alma Mater, "the seat of letters and study, at a time when Cambridge was a desolate fen and Oxford a tangled forest in a wild waste of waters."

All of these buildings were without the city walls, the Abbey at the special desire of Augustine that he might have a consecrated spot for his bones after death. According to the Roman and Oriental usages to which he was accustomed such burial could not be thought of within the city walls. But King Ethelbert, not content with having the new faith represented outside the city alone, removed his own palace to Reculver not far distant and, having consecrated Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury, gave him the former royal palace and an old British or Roman church as the foundation of the new Cathedral, which Augustine named Christ Church.

As you walk back to the Cathedral you go into the gateway of St. Augustine's monastery and look round the ancient precincts. The crumbling crypt of the Abbey church and the distant ruins of St. Pancras are eloquent of the glory of departed days. Even the burial place of Augustine is now unknown. The Abbey and its traditions were swept away by Henry VIII but the spirit of Augustine is still marching on for the restored buildings now harbor an efficient school for missionaries and the old Abbey sends its Christian teachers to the remotest ends of the earth. Back to the Cathedral gateway again and with eager anticipations you enter the precincts.

"Far off the noises of the world retreat"

and you are greeted by broad stretches of English lawn, splendid towering lindens, and fine old houses enclosed by picturesque walls over which vines clamber and beckon al

luringly. Keeping in mind that the two end towers of the Cathedral face the west, it is a delight to stroll slowly along the south side and gather first impressions. What a tremendously long structure it is. The transepts instead of being near the east end as in many churches which face west are actually midway of the building, and a second pair of transepts appears farther on. There is a fascination about it like that of reading a great book carved out of stone.

We begin to see clearly that nave and western transepts are all of one "style" with their tall "perpendicular" windows and huge buttresses which help to steady the arches of the nave. Just above the clerestory windows along the edge of the roof are additional pinnacles all helping to con

vey the impression that the huge nave rests lightly upon its foundations. A few steps beyond the first transept and suddenly the whole appearance of the building changes. This part plainly belongs to an earlier time. Here is the massive architecture of the Norman. No more pinnacles, no flying buttresses, but strong solid walls pierced by round arched windows. Yet a graceful tower with a pointed roof shows how beautifully even this more serious architecture can be handled by a skilled artist. Still moving eastward, a lovely little chapel, St. Anselm's, comes into view and our attention is arrested by the contrast between its Norman beginnings and the graceful "Decorated' window which adorns its south wall, and is evidently a later embellishment. The plain lead roof of this end of the Cathedral is gracefully rounded at its east end, and here we come upon a very striking feature, the semi-detached, never finished "Corona" which completes the church and is popularly known as Becket's Crown. We walk slowly around the Corona. The north side of the Cathedral was the territory of the old Monastery, until its monks, like those of Augustine's Abbey, were scattered by Henry VIII. We look with dismay on the ragged, vine covered Norman arches, the fragments of the old Infirmary and we pass by them into the "Dark Entry" haunted by a ghost as told in the "Ingoldsby legends." Here we discover other buildings, chapter house, library and the monks' lavatory clustering so close to the Cathedral that we can hardly puzzle out the features which balance those of the south side.

But if the south side told us its architectural story very frankly, this north side is utterly charming from its varied and bewildering attractions. You peer through a long dark passage and catch a glimpse of partly ruined cloisters surrounding a venerable graveyard. The ghostly dark entry opens out between queer little twisted Norman columns into a lovely bower of lawn and shrubbery, and when you pass out through the old prior's gate into the beautiful