Speaking of new cathedrals, while several are being built by the Roman Catholics, only one is under construction by the Church of England—­the first since the days of the Stuarts.  This is at Liverpool and the foundations have barely been begun.  The design for the cathedral was a competitive one selected from many submitted by the greatest architects in the world.  The award was made to Gilbert Scott, a young man of only twenty-one and a grandson of the famous architect of the same name who had so much to do with the restoration of several of the cathedrals.  The Liverpool church is to be the greatest in the Kingdom, even exceeding York Minster and St. Paul’s in size.  No attempt is made to fix the time when the building will be completed, but the work will undoubtedly occupy several generations.

In Norwich we stopped at the Maid’s Head Hotel, one of the noted old-time English hostelries.  It has been in business as a hotel nearly five hundred years and Queen Elizabeth was its guest while on one of her visits to the city of Norwich.  Despite its antiquity, it is thoroughly up-to-date and was one of the most comfortable inns that we found anywhere.  No doubt this is considerably due to a large modern addition, which has been built along the same lines as the older portion.  Near the cathedral are other ancient structures among which are the two gateways, whose ruins still faintly indicate their pristine splendor of carving and intricate design.  The castle, at one time a formidable fortress, has almost disappeared.  “Tombland” and “Strangers’ Hall” are the appellations of two of the finest half-timbered buildings that we saw.  The newer portions of Norwich indicate a prosperous business town and it is supplied with an unusually good street-car system.  Most of the larger English cities are badly off in this particular.  York, for instance, a place of seventy-five thousand, has but one street-car line, three or four miles in length, on which antiquated horse-cars are run at irregular intervals.

XIV

PETERBOROUGH, FOTHERINGHAY, ETC

The hundred miles of road that we followed from Norwich to Peterborough has hardly the suggestion of a hill, though some of it is not up to the usual English standard.  We paused midway at Dereham, whose remarkable old church is the only one we saw in England that had the bell-tower built separate from the main structure, though this same plan is followed in Chichester Cathedral.  In Dereham Church is the grave of Cowper, who spent his last years in the town.  The entire end of the nave is occupied by an elaborate memorial window of stained glass, depicting scenes and incidents of the poet’s life and works.  To the rear of the church is the open tomb of one of the Saxon princesses, and near it is a tablet reciting how this grave had been desecrated by the monks of Ely, who stole the relics and conveyed them to Ely Cathedral.  Numerous