CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
THE Dean and Chapter of Canterbury have already received J.- abundance of advice and reproof with regard to the casualty which has nearly deprived us of one of the greatest of our national treasures. Auger, it is well known, is the first emotion that suc- ceeds to fear, and the fright which we experienced on Tuesday, when we heard that the great Cathedral was in flames, was of no ordinary kind. It is natural, however, that the action of those who have to do with an institution which reckons its age by cen- turies should be deliberate, not to say tardy. To resolve, not more than two years after the water supply had become available, that it should be applied to the protection of the Cathedral, may be called almost prompt ; and the fact that the resolution, when taken, should remain for some two or three months unfulfilled will not seem strange to those who are familiar with the habits of a country town. We should like to know in how many of our cathedrals or great churches any such pre- caution has ever been thought of. One suggestion, indeed, we may be allowed to make. It is not sufficient that the means of ex- tinguishing a fire should be at hand. It will be within the recol- lection of our readers that the premises of a " fire-annihilating " company were burnt to the ground, and that the water-tower of the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. However perfect the appliances, some one must be at hand to apply them. The British Museum and the collections of South Kensington are constantly watched. There are few, we presume, who do not think that the loss of even the South Kensington treasures would be of less account than the destruction of the great mother-church of England.
Of the dignity of this title, the aspect of Canterbury, whether you regard it from within or from without, is pre-eminently worthy. More spacious and more magnificent cathedrals there are, but nowhere in Christendom one which shows a more stately and harmonious whole. To speak of our English Cathedrals only, there are some which may claim a superiority over it in one point or another. One has a longer nave, another a larger east window, a third a loftier spire. York Minster is a larger pile of buildings ; and Wells stands, perhaps, first of all our ecclesiastical buildings, in the marvellous beauty of its architecture. Yet even these, and with them all others, must yield to the structure of Canterbury the precedence which belongs to its see. One feature, too, it has in perhaps greater perfection than can be found elsewhere. The Close, a peculiar beauty of our English Cathedrals, is nowhere more spacious, fairer, less disturbed by incongruous associations. To stand on its well-kept sward, and look up to the magnificent pile which has been for nearly thirteen centuries the chief seat of English Christianity, and then to cast a glance on the orderly array of buildings which surround it, deanery, and houses of residence, and grammar-school, is an experience not easily to be forgotten. Nothing could be more characteristic of the Eng- lish Church than the air of repose, of dignity, and we may perhaps be allowed to add, of affluence, which surrounds the scene. Viewed from within, the Cathedral suffers in the judgment of many from the want of that splendour which belongs to the Roman ritual. In the days when Becket was still the chief of English saints, no shrine in Christendom was more splendid. Now the marble, so scantily relieved by drapery and colour, seems somewhat cold and bare ; yet its chaste, unadorned beauty bas a marvellous charm of its own. And there is at least nothing to distract the eye from the proportions, which for grace and harmony it would be impossible to excel.
Among the many associations which attach to the Cathedral three stand prominently forward ; and these alone, connected as they are with the earliest of our great poets, the most famous, if not the beat, of English Churchmen, and one of the greatest of Eng- lish soldiers, would have been enough to make of the catastrophe, which at one time seemed imminent, a national disaster. Each of them possesses more or less of that strange charm of perfect identi- fication of which even the least imaginative spirit is conscious, and in which we find the cause, if not the justification, of relic- worship. Of the splendid shrine of St. Thomas the Martyr, the zeal of Henry VIII. left nothing remaining but one doubtful ornament, the gilded crescent in the roof over the eastern end. But what is to us far more interesting, the locality of his death, can be identified without a doubt. The transept, still called the Transept of the Martyrdom, remains substantially un- changed; the massive masonry of the wall by which the Arch- bishop took his place still stands ; a stone in the pavement marks the actual spot where he fell ; and the visitor has under his feet what are possibly the very flags on which his brains were scattered. Ile can even see what Henry's Commissioners certainly never intended to escape, a few of the many painted windows which were once devoted to picturing the story of the Martyrdom. From Becket one naturally passes in thought to Chaucer and the Canterbury Pilgrims. Here the identification is in one respect less satisfying. The poet does not bring his pilgrims to Canterbury itself. The story of the journey is unfinished ; and though the wanting part has been supplied by a hand possibly not much later in date, we miss what would have had a singular interest as coming from Chaucer's own hand, the reception of the pilgrims within the Cathedral and at the shrine itself. Still, it is something to feel that the outer aspect of the building is essentially the same as that which met the poet's eyes when he rode up with his companions from the forest of Blean, and that within, the course of the pilgrims, as they passed from one object of veneration to another, can be traced with precision. There is something, however, certainly more satisfying about the memorials of the Black Prince. These leave nothing to be desired. The very gauntlets and helmet which he wore, possibly at Poitiers, if we must suppose him not to have grown to their size when he won Crecy, a boy of sixteen ; the scabbard of his sword, his shield, and velvet coat of State hang still above his tomb, and on it is the likeness of the man, showing all the characteristic beauty of his race, more certainly than can be said of almost any portrait of equal antiquity, the vera effigies of the great soldier. Naturally it is with regard to this memorial that we can best realise the greatness of the danger that has been just escaped. It is situated near the scene of fire, and the first im- pulse was to remove the precious accoutrements which hang above the tomb (the scabbard was broken in the process) ; for the tomb itself and for the effigy nothing, of course, could be done. One of those showers of molten lead which fell about the building, doing so marvellously little harm, might have destroyed in a moment one of the most precious of our national relics. It is difficult to esti- mate the regret which would have been caused by even so limited a loss. If the whole Cathedral had perished as Old St. Paul's perished in the Fire of London, we should at least have understood the feelings of the Canterbury citizens, who, when the fire of 1174 destroyed the beautiful choir, "tore their hair, beat the walls and pavement of the Church with their shoulders and the palms of their hands, and uttered tremendous curses against God and his saints."
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