and interior symmetries, one might well feel that four hundred years were not too long a period for producing the fabric to its present perfection. If such a building could be erected in a century, to the finest and last line of the sculptor's chisel, even an amateur of architecture might walk up and down under its lofty arches and roofage with but a forced sentiment of veneration. But the rime of age and history, which six hundred years have breathed upon its gray forests of columns, pillars, and carved work, produces upon a thoughtful mind an impression which no artistic architecture, however grand, can create without such associations.
Lichfield looks like a little city of steeples on approaching it in any direction. The tall spire of one of the churches, nearly half a mile from the cathedral, seems to arise from one of the towers of the great edifice, making four of graceful proportions that stand up in the heavens like the spangled minarets of a county's crown. Indeed, not until you are within the city itself do you find this fourth spire detached and standing on its own church tower. Near the cathedral on the city side there is a long, wide pool of water, almost a little lake, which serves as a mirror in which you see the three spires and the upper part of the grand edifice photographed as large and true as life. But, unhappily for the picture and the fancy,
