Foreign Parts Author:Henry James General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Original Publisher: B. Tauchnitz Subjects: Europe History / Europe / General History / United States / General History / United States / 20th Century Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / American / General Travel / Europe / General Notes: This... more » is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: WELLS AND SALISBURY. The pleasantest things in life, and perhaps the rarest, are its agreeable surprises. Things are often worse than we expect to find them; and when they are better we may mark the day with a white stone. These reflections are as pertinent to man as a tourist as to any other phase of his destiny, and I recently had occasion to make them in the ancient city of Wells. I knew in a general way that it had a great cathedral to show, but I was far from suspecting the precious picturesqueness of the little town. The immense predominance of the Minster towers, as you see them from the approaching train over the clustered houses at their feet, gives you indeed an intimation of it, and suggests that the city is nothing if not ecclesiastical; but I can wish the traveller no better fortune than to stroll forth in the early evening with as large a reserve of ignorance as my own, and treat himself to an hour of discoveries. I was lodged on the edge of Cathedral Green, and I had only to pass beneath one of the three crumbling Priory gates which enclose it, and cross the vast grassy oval, to stand before a minster- front which ranks among the first three or four in England. Wells Cathedral is extremely fortunate in being approached by this wide green level, on which the spectator may loiter and stroll to and fro, and shift his stand-point to his heart's...« less