A day might well be given to the vicinity of Winchester, which teems with points of literary and historic interest.  In any event, one should visit Twyford, only three miles away, often known as the “queen of the Hampshire villages” and famous for the finest yew tree in England.  It is of especial interest to Americans, since Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography here while a guest of Dr. Shipley, Vicar of St. Asaph, whose house, a fine Elizabethan mansion, still stands.

To Salisbury by way of Romsey is a fine drive of about thirty miles over good roads and through a very pleasing country.  Long before we reached the town there rose into view its great cathedral spire, the loftiest and most graceful in Britain, a striking landmark from the country for miles around.  Following the winding road and passing through the narrow gateway entering High Street, we came directly upon this magnificent church, certainly the most harmonious in design of any in the Kingdom.  The situation, too, is unique, the cathedral standing entirely separate from any other building, its gray walls and buttresses rising sheer up from velvety turf such as is seen in England alone.  It was planned and completed within the space of fifty years, which accounts for its uniformity of style; while the construction of most of the cathedrals ran through the centuries with various architecture in vogue at different periods.  The interior, however, lacks interest, and the absence of stained glass gives an air of coldness.  It seems almost unbelievable that the original stained windows were deliberately destroyed at the end of the Eighteenth Century by a so-called architect, James Wyatt, who had the restoration of the cathedral in charge.  To his everlasting infamy, “Wyatt swept away screens, chapels and porches, desecrated and destroyed the tombs of warriors and prelates, obliterated ancient paintings; flung stained glass by cart loads into the city ditch; and razed to the ground the beautiful old campanile which stood opposite the north porch.”  That such desecration should be permitted in a civilized country only a century ago indeed seems incredible.

[Illustration:  A cottage in HOLDENHURST, Hampshire.

From Water Color by Noelsmith.]

No one who visits Salisbury will forget Stonehenge, the most remarkable relic of prehistoric man to be found in Britain.  Nearly everyone is familiar with pictures of this solitary circle of stones standing on an eminence of Salisbury Plain, but one who has not stood in the shadow of these gigantic monoliths can have no idea of their rugged grandeur.  Their mystery is deeper than that of Egypt’s sphynx, for we know something of early Egyptian history, but the very memory of the men who reared the stones on Salisbury Plain is forgotten.  Who they were, why they built this strange temple, or how they brought for long distances these massive rocks that would tax modern resources to transport, we have scarcely