I suspect that the interior arrangement of the choir and the chancel has
been greatly modernized; for it is quite unlike anything that I have seen
elsewhere. Instead of one vast eastern window, there are rows of windows
lighting the Lady Chapel, and seen through rows of arches in the screen
of the chancel; the effect being, whoever is to have the credit of it,
very rich and beautiful. There is, I think, no stained glass in the
windows of the nave, though in the windows of the chancel there is some
of recent date, and from fragments of veritable antique. The effect of
the whole interior is grand, expansive, and both ponderous and airy; not
dim, mysterious, and involved, as Gothic interiors often are, the
roundness and openness of the arches being opposed to this latter effect.
When the chanting came to a close, one verger took his stand at the
entrance of the choir, and another stood farther up the aisle, and then
the door of a stall opened, and forth came a clerical dignity of much
breadth and substance, aged and infirm, and was ushered out of the choir
with a great deal of ceremony. We took him for the bishop, but he proved
to be only a canon.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282