It seems a
place where no worldly thought, no pride, or passion, or irreverence
could enter; a spot where, as a modern writer has beautifully expressed
it, a good man, might he make his choice, would wish to die."
The country around this beautiful city by the Itchen is full of quiet
charm, for life's ever-changing drama has but one and the same
background. The actors come and go, but the stage remains much the same,
and the devotions, the meditations, and the acts of men who lived
centuries ago were set in the amphitheatre of the same green hills, and
took place beside the same winding river as those we gaze upon to-day.
[Illustration: PLAN OF WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL]
Literature, too, has worthy names here in Izaak Walton and Jane Austen,
both of whom lie buried in the cathedral; while the house at Winchester
in which the author of _Persuasion_ lived, for a brief period before
her death, stands beyond the college gate. Above the door is a wooden
tablet recording that here Jane Austen spent her last days, dying July
18, 1817. She had previously resided at Chawton for some eight years,
but her house in the village is now a Workmen's Club.
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