This
likewise was a relic of the battle of Worcester, where it had been lost
by Charles. Many gentlemen--connected with the city government, I
suppose--were passing through the hall; and, looking through its interior
doors, we saw stately staircases and council-rooms panelled with oak or
other dark wood. There seems to be a good deal of state in the
government of these old towns.
Worcester Cathedral would have impressed me much had I seen it earlier;
though its aspect is less venerable than that of Chester or Lichfield,
having been faithfully renewed and repaired, and stone-cutters and masons
were even now at work on the exterior. At our first visit, we found no
entrance; but coming again at ten o'clock, when the service was to begin,
we found the door open, and the chorister-boys, in their white robes,
standing in the nave and aisles, with elder people in the same garb, and
a few black-robed ecclesiastics and an old verger. The interior of the
cathedral has been covered with a light-colored paint at some recent
period. There is, as I remember, very little stained glass to enrich and
bedim the light; and the effect produced is a naked, daylight aspect,
unlike what I have seen in any other Gothic cathedral. The plan of the
edifice, too, is simple; a nave and side aisles, with great clustered
pillars, from which spring the intersecting arches; and, somehow or
other, the venerable mystery which I have found in Westminster Abbey and
elsewhere does not lurk in these arches and behind these pillars.
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