The City of Salisbury, or officially, New Sarum, is a regularly built,
spacious and clean county capital that would be of interest and
attraction if there were no glorious cathedral to grace and adorn it.
As a matter of fact, cathedral towns away from the immediate precincts
suffer from the overshadowing character of the great churches, that
take most of the honour and glory to themselves. This is, of course
but right, and the discerning traveller will keep the even balance
between the human interest of court and alley and market place and the
awed reverence that must be felt by the most materialistic of us when
we come within the immediate influence of these solemn sanctuaries, of
which Salisbury is the most perfect in the land.
[Illustration: OLD SARUM.]
It is impossible to give the merest outline of the history of
Salisbury without first referring to that of Old Sarum, or
Sorbiodunum, two miles to the north. The huge mound on the edge of the
Plain was doubtless a prehistoric fortress, though of a much simpler
form than the three-terraced enclosure of twenty-seven acres that we
see there to-day.
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