I wish that I
might have seen it, for it would have pleased me.
Now when I had well considered all this, not without an orison for that
misguided King, I set off for Cadnam, and holding now only to the road,
marching fast, for it was late, I came over the ridge beyond Black
water into the valley of the Test, and so entered Romsey a little after
it was dark.
[Illustration: ROMSEY ABBEY]
Romsey, as I soon found on the following morning, has nothing at all to
offer the traveller except one of the most solemn and noble Norman
churches in all England, monastic too, for it was the church of the
great Benedictine Nunnery of Our Lady of Romsey. It is impossible to
exaggerate the impression this astonishing Norman pile, of vast size
and unsurpassed age and reverence, makes upon the traveller. One seems
in looking upon it to see before his eyes the foundation of England. I
cannot hope to describe it or to convey to another what it meant to me.
It is at once grandiose and reverent, of enormous, almost incredible
size and weight and strength larger than many a cathedral, heavy as a
kingdom, stronger than a thousand years.
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