Symons in her volume. This august building was hardly difficult for me to

locate, its looming spire being ever-visible wherever one goes in Salisbury.

Indeed, as I was making my way back to this guest house this evening, I glanced

back over my shoulder on a number of occasions and was met each time by a view

of the sun setting behind that great spire.

 

And yet tonight, in the quiet of this room, I find that what really remains with

me from this first day's travel is not Salisbury Cathedral, nor any of the other

charming sights of this city, but rather that marvellous view encountered this

morning of the rolling English countryside. Now I am quite prepared to believe

that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I

have seen in encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking

photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and

waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of course, been my

privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard

this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest - such as I saw

it this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations,

however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I

believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective

observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is

probably best summed up by the term 'greatness'. For it is true, when I stood on

that high ledge this morning and viewed the land before me, I distinctly felt

that rare, yet unmistakable feeling - the feeling that one is in the presence of

greatness. We call this land of ours Great Britain, and there may be those who

believe this a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the