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derable extent. The streets are, in general, spacious, and built at right angles. Nadder, Willy, and Avon, three small rivers, meeting near the city, run through them in canals, lined with brick, and this distribution of water forms a singular appearance. It has also been remarked that no stream flows through that part of the city inhabited by the butchers, and consequently, where it was most wanted. There are no vaults in the churches, nor cellars any where to be found in the town, the soil being so moist, that the water rises up in graves, dug in the cathedral. Here is a spacious market-place, in which stands a fine town-house. The manufactures of the place are cloths of various kinds, and cutlery of almost every description. Besides the Cathedral, there are, in the city, three other churches and three charityschools, in which 170 children are taught and clothed. It has, likewise, an hospital or college, established 1683, by Bishop Ward, (one of the founders of the royal society,) for ten widows of poor clergymen. This does honour to his memory.

The cathedral of Salisbury demands special attention. It was founded, 1219, by Bishop Poor, who removed hither from Old Sarum, upon which the greatest part of the citizens of that place followed him. The structure is reckoned the most elegant and regular Gothic building in the kingdom. It is in the form of a lantern, with a spire of free-stone in the middle of it, 401 feet high, being the tallest in England! According to this computation, it is twice the height of the Monu

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ment. The church, it is said, hath as many doors as there are months, windows as there are days, and pillars as there are hours in the years. Hence the well known verses :

As many days as in one year there be,
So many windows in one church we see;
As many marble pillars there appear

As there are hours throughout the fleeting year;
As many gates as moons one year does view,
Strange are to tell, yet not more strange than true!

The monuments are numerous; but my attentention was chiefly fixed on a marble slab, erected to the memory of the late James Harris, Esq. author of The Hermes, (declared by Bishop Lowth to be the most beautiful and perfect example of analysis, that has been exhibited since the days of Aristotle); it was decorated by a medallion head, and a neat classical inscription. He was a studious man-has thrown much light on the philological parts of learning, and was usually denominated the Philosopher of Salisbury. He was the father of the present Lord Malmsbury, whose diplomatic merits are known and admired, and by whom a complete edition of his works, with memoirs, have been published.

We saw also a stone monument, representing a little boy habited in episcopal robes, a mitre on his head, and a crosier in his hand. This, which was buried under the seats near the pulpit, was taken from thence, and placed in the north part of the nave, where it now lies, defended by iron cross bars. Mr. Gregory, Prebendary of Winterborne

CURIOUS ENGRAVING.

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Earles, after a good deal of trouble in searching old statutes and MSS., we are told, found that the children of the choir anciently elected a chorister bishop on St. Nicholas's day; from that to Innocent's day he was dressed in Pontifical robes; his fellows were prebends, and they performed every service, except the mass, which the real bishop, dean, and prebends, usually did. They made processions, sung part of the mass, and, so careful was the church, that no interruption nor press should incommode them, that, by a statute of Sarum, it was pronounced excommunication. If the choral bishop died within the month, his exequies were solemnized with pomp and sadness: he was buried, as all other bishops, in his ornaments. It is certain, therefore, that this stone monument belongs to a choral bishop dying within the month, and may be deemed a curiosity. Nor must I quit the Cathedral, without noticing its beautiful window, on which, after the design of West, has been painted in glowing colours our Saviour's Resurrection. The countenance and attitude of the Messiah are finely expressive of the event. We behold him starting from amidst the darkness and oblivion of the tomb;

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I lately purchased a beautiful picture of the Resurrection of Christ, from a design of Raphael, and executed by Dalton, Vivares, and Grignion, famous

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engravers in their day. The sepulchre is placed in the midst of a garden: Jerusalem is in the back ground; the three women are coming towards the melancholy spot; JESUS appears at the entrance of the sepulchre, with all the marks of triumph arising from the recovery of existence; and the Roman guards, with most expressive countenances, exhibit the utmost dismay and consternation! It is not improbable that Doddridge had seen this picture when he penned these lines on the Resurrection of our Saviour, which I have written beneath it :

The guards around
In wild dismay,
Fall to the ground

And sink away!

Should the reader ever meet with this engraving it is well worthy his attention.

This church has a fine cloister, and a chapterhouse of singular form. It is an octagon of 150 feet in circumference, and yet the roof bears all upon one pillar, in the centre, so much too weak in appearance for the support of such a prodigious weight, that the building is, on this account, thought to be one of the greatest curiosities in England.

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Old Sarum stands at the distance of one mile north of Salisbury; it is as ancient as the old Britons. Walker informs us, that though it once covered the summit of a high steep hill, yet there is nothing now to be seen of it except some small ruins of a castle, with a double entrenchment, and

WILTON HOUSE.

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a deep ditch. It has been whimsically remarked, that the tracks of the streets and cathedral may be pretty distinctly traced out by the different colours of the corn growing, where the city once stood!

The inhabitants, labouring under inconveniences for the want of water, and on account of the bleakness of the air to which the height of their situation exposed them, removed to the new city. Old Sarum is now reduced to a single farm-house, yet it still sends two members to parliament! Such things call for reformation.

Wilton House, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, in the vicinity of Salisbury, must not be passed over in silence. It stands near the little town of Wilton, whence the county (Wiltshire) takes its name. The mansion was raised on the ruins of a sequestered abbey towards the latter end of the reign of Henry the Eighth, but not finished till many years after, when neither pains nor expense were spared to render it one of the most superb seats in the kingdom. The statues, busts, paintings, &c. collected at different periods, are SO arranged, that it may be called a grand Museum. The following are worthy attention; it would require a volume to describe them.

In the court before the front stands a column of white Egyptian granite, on the top of which is a fine statue of Venus; this was originally set up before the temple of Venus Genetrix, by Julius Cæsar. The shaft, being only one piece, weighs between sixty and seventy hundred weight. This

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