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VISITING CATHEDRALS
 

a pretty little town running from hill to hill; but more than this I do not know.

Thus English ecclesiastical architecture is on the whole less picturesque and less plastic than that of the Continent. When the ancient Britons had once contrived to build enormous church naves with a wooden ceiling, they kept to it in Gothic as well, evidently prompted by a primitive conservatism; and so their churches are large halls with broad windows, without vaultage or groins, without any huge system of buttresses, arches, cornices and the whole of that plastic riot; and they have two rectangular towers by the gateway and one above the cross-ties, statues flung out by the Reformation and scanty sculptural adornment, the inner space spoilt by the choir and the general impression considerably upset by the presence of sacristans.

But just one word about you, tiny churches without choirs and sacristans, bare and cold ante-rooms of God, with an oaken roof, a grassy graveyard around, and a rectangular belfry among the trees, which is as typical

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