This idle time was delightful so long as I gave my attention
exclusively to houses from the outside, and to hills, rocks,
trees, waters, and all visible nature, which here harmonizes
with man's works. To sit on some high hill and look down on
Bath, sun-flushed or half veiled in mist; to lounge on Camden
Crescent, or climb Sion Hill, or take my ease with the
water-drinkers in the spacious, comfortable Pump Room; or,
better still, to rest at noon in the ancient abbey--all this
was pleasure pure and simple, a quiet drifting back until I
found myself younger by five years than I had taken myself to
be.
I haunted the abbey, and the more I saw of it the more I loved
it. The impression it had made on me during my former visits
had faded, or else I had never properly seen it, or had not
seen it in the right emotional mood. Now I began to think it
the best of all the great abbey churches of England and the
equal of the cathedrals in its effect on the mind. How rich
the interior is in its atmosphere of tempered light or tender
gloom! How tall and graceful the columns holding up the high
roof of white stone with its marvellous palm-leaf sculpture!
What a vast expanse of beautifully stained glass! I certainly
gave myself plenty of time to appreciate it on this occasion,
as I visited it every day, sometimes two or three times, and
not infrequently I sat there for an hour at a stretch.
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