cathedrals, that I desire to write, but of Salisbury as it appears to
the dweller on the Plain. For Salisbury is the capital of the Plain, the
head and heart of all those villages, too many to count, scattered far
and wide over the surrounding country. It is the villager's own peculiar
city, and even as the spot it stands upon is the "pan or receyvor of
most part of the waters of Wiltshire," so is it the receyvor of all he
accomplishes in his laborious life, and thitherward flow all his
thoughts and ambitions. Perhaps it is not so difficult for me as it
would be for most persons who are not natives to identify myself with
him and see it as he sees it. That greater place we have been in, that
mighty, monstrous London, is ever present to the mind and is like a mist
before the sight when we look at other places; but for me there is no
such mist, no image so immense and persistent as to cover and obscure
all others, and no such mental habit as that of regarding people as a
mere crowd, a mass, a monstrous organism, in and on which each
individual is but a cell, a scale. This feeling troubles and confuses my
mind when I am in London, where we live "too thick"; but quitting it I
am absolutely free; it has not entered my soul and coloured me with its
colour or shut me out from those who have never known it, even of the
simplest dwellers on the soil who, to our sophisticated minds, may seem
like beings of another species. This is my happiness--to feel, in all
places, that I am one with them. To say, for instance, that I am going
to Salisbury to-morrow, and catch the gleam in the children's eye and
watch them, furtively watching me, whisper to one another that there
will be something for them, too, on the morrow. To set out betimes and
overtake the early carriers' carts on the road, each with its little
cargo of packages and women with baskets and an old man or two, to
recognize acquaintances among those who sit in front, and as I go on
overtaking and passing carriers and the half-gipsy, little "general
dealer" in his dirty, ramshackle, little cart drawn by a rough,
fast-trotting pony, all of us intent on business and pleasure, bound for
Salisbury--the great market and emporium and place of all delights for
all the great Plain. I remember that on my very last expedition, when I
had come twelve miles in the rain and was standing at a street corner,
wet to the skin, waiting for my carrier, a man in a hurry said to me, "I
say, just keep an eye on my cart for a minute or two while I run round
to see somebody. I've got some fowls in it, and if you see anyone come
poking round just ask them what they want--you can't trust every one.
I'll be back in a minute." And he was gone, and I was very pleased to
watch his cart and fowls till he came back.
Business is business and must be attended to, in fair or foul weather,
but for business with pleasure we prefer it fine on market-day. The one
great and chief pleasure, in which all participate, is just to be there,
to be in the crowd--a joyful occasion which gives a festive look to
every face. The mere sight of it exhilarates like wine. The numbers--the
people and the animals! The carriers' carts drawn up in rows on
rows--carriers from a hundred little villages on the Bourne, the Avon,
the Wylye, the Nadder, the Ebble, and from all over the Plain, each
bringing its little contingent. Hundreds and hundreds more coming by
train; you see them pouring down Fisherton Street in a continuous
procession, all hurrying market-wards. And what a lively scene the
market presents now, full of cattle and sheep and pigs and crowds of
people standing round the shouting auctioneers! And horses, too, the
beribboned hacks, and ponderous draught horses with manes and tails
decorated with golden straw, thundering over the stone pavement as they
are trotted up and down! And what a profusion of fruit and vegetables,
fish and meat, and all kinds of provisions on the stalls, where women
with baskets on their arms are jostling and bargaining! The Corn