[Illustration:  BEMERTON CHURCH.]

Although a pleasant and retired little place, Bemerton would not be of much interest were it not for its associations with the “singer of surpassing sweetness,” the author of The Temple.  George Herbert became rector here in 1630 and died two years later, aged 42.  He lies within the altar rails of the church and the tablet above is simply inscribed G.H., 1633.  The lines on the Parsonage wall and written by the parson-poet were originally above the chimney inside.  They run thus:—­

  “If thou chance for to find
  A new house to thy mind,
  And built without any cost,
  Be good to the poor
  As God gives thee store
  And then thy labour’s not lost.”

In the garden that slopes down to the river there was quite recently, and may be still, an old and gnarled medlar planted by Herbert.  The well-known painting “George Herbert at Bemerton” by W. Dyce, R.A., in the Guildhall Art Gallery, gives an excellent picture of the calm grace of the surroundings and of the heavenly spire of the Cathedral soaring up into the skies a mile away.  The fine new memorial church at Bemerton is used for the regular Sunday services and Herbert’s little old church for worship on weekdays.  It is pleasant to think that the bells which sound so sweetly across the meadows, as we take the footpath way to Salisbury, are those that were rung by Herbert when he first entered his church.

The City of Salisbury, or officially, New Sarum, is a regularly built, spacious and clean county capital that would be of interest and attraction if there were no glorious cathedral to grace and adorn it.  As a matter of fact, cathedral towns away from the immediate precincts suffer from the overshadowing character of the great churches, that take most of the honour and glory to themselves.  This is, of course but right, and the discerning traveller will keep the even balance between the human interest of court and alley and market place and the awed reverence that must be felt by the most materialistic of us when we come within the immediate influence of these solemn sanctuaries, of which Salisbury is the most perfect in the land.

[Illustration:  OLD SARUM.]

It is impossible to give the merest outline of the history of Salisbury without first referring to that of Old Sarum, or Sorbiodunum, two miles to the north.  The huge mound on the edge of the Plain was doubtless a prehistoric fortress, though of a much simpler form than the three-terraced enclosure of twenty-seven acres that we see there to-day.  In Roman times the importance of this advanced outpost of chalk, commanding the approach to the lower valley of the Avon, would be appreciated.  But it would appear from recent investigations that little was done to elaborate the defences.  Nevertheless Sorbiodunum was an important Roman town and stood on the junction of two great thoroughfares—­the Icknield Way and the Port Way.  The recent excavations, interfered with to a large extent by the late war, have been so disappointing in the lack of Roman relics that a suggestion has been made by Sir W.H.  St. John Hope that the true site of the Roman town may have been at Stratford, just below the mound to the north-west.  It is possible that further excavations will settle the question.