The
choir, no doubt, is richer and more beautiful; but we did not enter it.
I remember two tombs, with recumbent figures on there, between the
pillars that divide the nave from the side aisles, and there were also
mural monuments,--one, well executed, to an officer slain in the
Peninsular war, representing him falling from his horse; another by a
young widow to her husband, with an inscription of passionate grief, and
a record of her purpose finally to sleep beside him. He died in 1803. I
did not see on the monument any record of the consummation of her
purpose; and so perhaps she sleeps beside a second husband. There are
more antique memorials than these two on the wall, and I should have been
interested to examine them; but the service was now about to begin in the
choir, and at the far-off end of the nave the old verger waved his hand
to banish us from the cathedral. At the same time he moved towards us,
probably to say that he would show it to us after service; but having
little time, and being so moderately impressed with what I had already
seen, I took my departure, and so disappointed the old man of his
expected shilling or half-crown. The tomb of King John is somewhere in
this cathedral.
We renewed our rambles through the town, and, passing the Museum of the
Worcester Natural History Society, I yielded to J-----'s wish to go in.
There are three days in the week, I believe, on which it is open to the
public; but this being one of the close days, we were admitted on payment
of a shilling.
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