The great church is entered by the north porch, and the immediate effect of august beauty is not at first tempered by the impression of coldness that gradually makes itself felt as we compare, from memory, the interior with that of Winchester or even some of the less important churches we have visited.  But this is perhaps only a temporary fault, and when the windows of the nave are rejewelled with the glorious colours that shone from them before the Reformation, the cold austerity of this part of the great church will largely disappear.  The extreme orderliness of the architectural conception, the numberless columns and arches ranged in stately rows, vanishing in almost unbroken perspective, make Salisbury unique among English cathedral interiors.  An old rhyme gives the building as many pillars, windows, and doors as there are hours, days, and months in the year.

In addition to his other questionable traits, James Wyatt must have had something of the Prussian drill-sergeant in his nature.  Under his “restoration” scheme the tombs of bishops and knights that once gave a picturesque confusion to the spaces of the nave were marshalled into precise and regular order in two long lines between the columns on each side.  For congregational purposes this was and is an advantage, but Wyatt actually lost one of his subjects in the drilling process and so confused the remainder that the historical sequence is lost.

[Illustration:  PLAN OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]

It is not proposed to describe these tombs in detail.  A glance at the sketch plan on the preceding page will make the position of each quite clear.  Especially notice should be given to (10) William Longespee, 1st Earl of Salisbury; (14) Robert, Lord Hungerford; (13) Lord Charles Stourton, who was hanged in Salisbury Market Place with a silken halter for instigating the murder of two men named Hartgill, father and son.  A wire noose representing the rope used to hang above the tomb. (3) The reputed tomb of a “Boy Bishop,” but possibly this is really a bishop’s “heart shrine.”  Salisbury seems to have been in an especial sense the home of the singular custom of electing a small lad as bishop during the festival of Christmas.  According to Canon Fletcher in his pleasant little book on the subject lately published, no less than twenty-one names are known of Boy Bishops who played the part in this cathedral.  Several modern memorials of much interest upon the walls of the nave explain themselves.  One, to the left of the north porch as we enter, is to Edward Wyndham Tempest, youthful poet and “happy warrior” who was killed in the late war.  Another will remind us that Richard Jefferies, although buried at Broadwater in Sussex, was the son of a North Wilts yeoman and a native of the shire.