No, modern Dorchester is not like that, and its chief features--the noble elm avenues, that struck the traveller by road into and out of the town with admiration--have had their exquisite nobility qualified by time and change. Those grand avenues extended north, south, east, and west; but to-day they have in some cases disappeared, and in others have been obscured by suburban buildings, that have shut out the views of the fields from the pavements. Dorchester, however, is rich in notable things. As you enter it from Piddletown and Ten Hatches, and rise up along High East Street to Cornhill, which is the very centre of the town, you approach the grey old church of St. Peter, and note in the flagged space beneath the tower the bronze statue of William Barnes, the “Dorset poet,” 1801–1886, with a verse aptly chosen from his own writings:
Zoo now I hope his kindly fëace Is gone to vind a better plëace, But still wi’ vo’k a’ left behind He’ll always be a’ kept in mind.
Thus appropriately, in the olden Wessex folk-speech he did so much to preserve, is the memory of the amiable “Pa’son Barnes” kept alive.
Much else is changed, but still on market-days the country-folk come pouring into what they to this day call “Darchester.” They come into it chiefly by carrier’s cart, or by dogcarts and other road vehicles, just as of yore; and although the market-day assemblage of carriers’ tilt-carts is an astonishing survival in numerous old English towns, there are nowhere to be seen so astonishingly many as here; and the occupants of them are not infrequently such genuine old crusted characters as you read of, and wag the same old Wessex tongue. For the rest, Dorchester has the Roman encampment of Poundbury and the amphitheatre of Maumbury to show; in High West Street is the house, duly marked, where the infamous Judge Jeffreys lodged when on his Assize of Blood in 1685, and in the Town Hall his chair is shown. While some things have changed, other trivial details have remained the same for considerably over a century. Thus, Rowlandson in 1797 made a drawing of King George III. being driven in a post-chaise to the “King’s Arms.” The “King’s Arms” Hotel still stands where it did, and looks in every respect the selfsame place, which is itself a remarkable proof of the abiding nature of our institutions; but what is yet more remarkable is the fact that the selfsame, indubitable individual old flower-pots are on the roof of the portico yet. In the face of the destiny of all flower-pots to be resolved at some time into potsherds, and in view of the many times when the roof of that portico must have been used, on election and other occasions, as a convenient place whence to harangue excited crowds, their survival is strange indeed.