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The Story of
The Birth of Canterbury
Two Sick Men See a Vision

(Written for the “Railways Magazine” by William Vance.)

“Not in vain Shall England's sons dwell by thee many a mile;

With verdant meads and fields of waving grain,

Thy rough uncultured banks ere long shall smile;

Heav'n-pointing spires shall beautify thy plain.”

The settlement of Canterbury was to be the replica par excellence of all that was best in England. The inspiration and the implementing of this high-souled plan to establish “This Other England” fell, however, to the lot of an Irishman, and the terrors of an Irish famine brought the scheme into being. In the heart of his English-planned City, this Irish Founder contemplates, with bronze calm, an English Cathedral and gazes on an English Square. At the foot of his statue, in Christchurch, is inscribed the briefest of inscriptions, yet it speaks more eloquently than the utmost verbosity—its only words are: