The Paradise Mystery

American tourists, sure appreciators of all that is ancient

and picturesque in England, invariably come to a halt, holding

their breath in a sudden catch of wonder, as they pass through

the half-ruinous gateway which admits to the Close of

Wrychester. Nowhere else in England is there a fairer

prospect of old-world peace. There before their eyes, set in

the centre of a great green sward, fringed by tall elms and

giant beeches, rises the vast fabric of the thirteenth-century

Cathedral, its high spire piercing the skies in which rooks

are for ever circling and calling. The time-worn stone, at a

little distance delicate as lacework, is transformed at

different hours of the day into shifting shades of color,

varying from grey to purple: the massiveness of the great nave

and transepts contrasts impressively with the gradual tapering

of the spire, rising so high above turret and clerestory that

it at last becomes a mere line against the ether. In morning,

as in afternoon, or in evening, here is a perpetual atmosphere

of rest; and not around the great church alone, but in the

quaint and ancient houses which fence in the Close. Little

less old than the mighty mass of stone on which their

ivy-framed windows look, these houses make the casual observer

feel that here, if anywhere in the world, life must needs run

smoothly. Under those high gables, behind those mullioned

windows, in the beautiful old gardens lying between the stone

porches and the elm-shadowed lawn, nothing, one would think,

could possibly exist but leisured and pleasant existence: even

the busy streets of the old city, outside the crumbling

gateway, seem, for the moment, far off.

Dettagli