The
old stone monuments and the later Celtic crosses should be rescued
from serving such purposes as brook bridges, stone walls,
stepping-stones, and gate-posts and reared again on their original
sites. They are of national importance, and the nation should do this.
[Illustration: Half-timber Cottages, Waterside, Evesham]
CHAPTER IX
CATHEDRAL CITIES AND ABBEY TOWNS
There is always an air of quietude and restfulness about an ordinary
cathedral city. Some of our cathedrals are set in busy places, in
great centres of population, wherein the high towering minster looks
down with a kind of pitying compassion upon the toiling folk and
invites them to seek shelter and peace and the consolations of
religion in her quiet courts. For ages she has watched over the city
and seen generation after generation pass away. Kings and queens have
come to lay their offerings on her altars, and have been borne there
amid all the pomp of stately mourning to lie in the gorgeous tombs
that grace her choir. She has seen it all--times of pillage and alarm,
of robbery and spoliation, of change and disturbance, but she lives
on, ever calling men with her quiet voice to look up in love and faith
and prayer.
But many of our cathedral cities are quite small places which owe
their very life and existence to the stately church which pious hands
have raised centuries ago.
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