was not possible, even after the Royalists regained power.  The few splendid examples which escaped his wrath—­notably Warwick Castle—­fortunately happened at the time to be in possession of adherents of Parliament.  The damage Cromwell inflicted upon the churches was usually limited to destruction of stone images, tombs and altars, as savoring of idolatry.  This spirit even extended to the destruction of priceless stained-glass windows, the loss of which we can not too greatly deplore, especially since the very art of making this beautiful glass seems to be a lost one.

At Cambridge we were within easy reach of the scenes of the Protector’s early life.  He was born in 1599 at Huntingdon, sixteen miles distant, and was twenty years a citizen of St. Ives, only a few miles away.  He was a student at Cambridge and for several years was a farmer near Ely, being a tenant on the cathedral lands.  As Ely is only fifteen miles north of Cambridge, it occurred to us to attend services at the cathedral there on Sunday morning.  We followed a splendid road leading through a beautiful country, rich with fields of grain almost ready for harvest.

The cathedral is one of the largest and most remarkable in England, being altogether different in architecture from any other in the Kingdom.  Instead of a spire, it has a huge, castellated, octagonal tower, and while it was several hundred years in building, a harmonious design was maintained throughout, although it exhibits in some degree almost every style of church architecture known in England.  Ely is an inconsequential town of about seven thousand inhabitants and dominated from every point of view by the huge bulk of the cathedral.  Only a portion of the space inside the vast building was occupied by seats, and though the great church would hold many thousands of people if filled to its capacity, the congregation was below the average that might be found in the leading churches of an American town the size of Ely.  One of the cathedral officials with whom I had a short talk said that the congregations averaged small indeed and were growing smaller right along.  The outlook for Ely he did not consider good, a movement being on foot to cut another diocese from the territory and to make a cathedral, probably of the great church, at Bury St. Edmunds.  In recent years this policy of creating new dioceses has been in considerable vogue in England, and of course is distasteful to the sections immediately affected.  The services in Ely Cathedral were simpler than usual and were through well before noon.

Before returning to Cambridge we visited St. Ives and Huntingdon, both of which were closely associated with the life of Cromwell.  The former is a place of considerable antiquity, although the present town may be said to date from 1689, at which time it was rebuilt after being totally destroyed by fire.  One building escaped, a quaint stone structure erected in the center of the stone bridge crossing the River