IT was in Lichfield, now some months ago, that I stood by a wall that flanks the main road there and overlooks a fine wide pond, in which you may see the three spires of the Cathedral mirrored. As I so gazed into the water and noted the clear reflection of the stonework a man came up beside me and talked in a very cheery way. He accosted me with such freedom that he was very evidently not from Europe, and as there was no insolence in his freedom he was not a forward Asiatic either; besides which, his face was that of our own race, for his nose was short and simple and his lips reasonably thin. His eyes were full of astonishment and vitality. He was seeing the world. He was perhaps thirty-five years old.
I would not say that he was a Colonial, because that word means so little; but he talked English in that accent commonly called American, yet he said he was a Brittishur, so what he was remains concealed; but surely he was not of this land, for, as you shall presently see, England was more of a marvel to him than it commonly is to the English.
He asked me, to begin with, the name of the building upon our left, and I told him it was the[75] Cathedral, to which his immediate answer was, was I sure? How could there be a cathedral in such a little town?
I said that it just was so, and I remembered the difficulty of the explanation and said no more. Then he looked up at the three spires and said: “Wondurful; isn’t it?” And I said: “Yes.”
Then I said to him that we would go in, and he seemed very willing; so we went towards the Close, and as we went he talked to me about the religion of those who served the Cathedral, and asked if they were Episcopalian, or what. So this also I told him. And when he learnt that what I told him was true of all the other cathedrals, he said heartily: “Is thet so?” And he was silent for half a minute or more.
We came and stood by the west front, and looked up at the height of it, and he was impressed.
He wagged his head at it and said: “Wondurful, isn’t it?” And then he added: “Marvlurs how they did things in those old days!” but I told him that much of what he was looking at was new.
In answer to this (for I fear that his honest mind was beginning to be disturbed by doubt), he pointed to the sculptured figures and said that they were old, as one could see by their costumes. And as I thought there might be a quarrel about it, I did not contradict; but I let him go wandering round to the south of it until he came to the figure of a knight with a moustache, gooseberry eyes, and in[76] general a face so astoundingly modern that one did not know what to say or do when one looked at it. It was expressionless.
My companion, who had not told me his name, looked long and thoughtfully at this figure, and then came back, more full of time and of the past of our race than ever; he insisted upon my coming round with him and looking at the image. He told me that we could not do better than that nowadays with all our machinery, and he asked me whether a photograph could be got of it. I told him yes, without doubt, and what was better, perhaps the sculptor had a duplicate, and that we would go and find if this were so, but he paid no attention to these words.
The amount of work in the building profoundly moved this man, and he asked me why there was so much ornament, for he could clearly estimate the vast additional expense of working so much stone that might have been left plain; though I am certain, from what I gathered of his character, he would not have left any building wholly plain, not even a railway station, still less a town hall, but would have had here and there an allegorical figure as of Peace or of Commerce—the figure of an Abstract Idea. Still he was moved by such an excess of useless labour as stood before him. Not that it did not give him pleasure—it gave him great pleasure—but that he thought it enough and more than enough.
We went inside. I saw that he took off his hat, a custom doubtless universal, and, what struck me[77] much more, he adopted within the Cathedral a tone of whisper, not only much lower than his ordinary voice, but of quite a different quality, and I noticed that he was less erect as he walked, although his head was craned upward to look towards the roof. The stained glass especially pleased him, but there was much about it he did not understand. I told him that there could be seen there a copy of the Gospels of great antiquity which had belonged to St. Chad; but when I said this he smiled pleasantly, as though I had offered to show him the saddle of a Unicorn or the tanned skin of a Hippogriff. Had............