Volume 25 — A CLOSE CONTRIVANCE AT WINCHESTER!

LD Winchester—as most people know, and the rest may have heard—has a noble Cathedral. But what is the noblest Cathedral in the possession of an ignoble clergy? A temple inhabited by owls and bats—infested with rats and mice; stupid, crawling, disagreeable and voracious creatures.

Winchester Cathedral, however, rejoices under the guardianship of a body of divines of whom it may fearlessly be asserted that they neither hoot nor squeak, nor fly on any wings but those of devotion, nor offend the external senses, nor nibble to any extent that is uncapitular.

Some Chapters—the excellent Dean of Winchester is stricken in years, and for the present management of the affairs of the Cathedral, renown and honour are probably due altogether to his subordinates—, some lazy indifferent Chapters, content themselves with keeping the glorious buildings bequeathed to them by the great churchmen of the Middle Ages in simple repair. This may, indeed, include ornamental restorations. But here they stop. Averse to progress, these prebendal sloths do nothing whatever to improve their cathedrals, by alterations and embellishments in accordance with the feelings and wants of the age.

Sluggish indifference like this is not to be cast, in the teeth of those high-minded and liberal clergymen, the Chapter of Winchester. We are informed that they have lately enriched the interior of that majestic edifice with additional features, which, whilst subservient to utility, have, at the same time, the high æsthetical merit of embodying, or symbolising the canonical spirit of the nineteenth century.

Double rows of iron hurdles, surmounted by chevaux-de-frise, have been placed by these magnanimous dignitaries across the aisles of the Cathedral.

We are sorry to say that a correspondent, writing from Winchester, is so disrespectful as to suggest a motive for the erection of these barriers of a nature unclerical, if not unworthy. He supposes that the reverend gentry of the Close have taken to sporting, and as neither custom, nor the agriculturists to whom the meadows belong, would allow them to ride steeple-chases in the valley of the Itchen, they have set up "bullfinchers" within their own bounds, in order to prosecute the chase of the steeple within the church.