Commonplace Book

'The neighbourhood of the Cathedral though is depressing. So much ancient stone however fairly piled, and however rich with the bodies of Saints and famous men, seems to suck the vitality of its humble neighbours. It is like a great forest oak; nothing can grow healthily beneath its shade.

All this is a form of heresy I know. A long walk in the sun, all along the valley too, leaves one little appetite to appreciate the value of the picture from an aesthetic point of view. A bare hilltop would have pleased me better than all the Closes and Cathedrals in England - '

from Salisbury Cathedral, a piece in the 1903 diary in A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals by Virginia Woolf