These
pillars support a kind of entablature, which takes a triangular plan.
The whole bears a near resemblance to the style of the Byzantine
architecture. Above the second row of arches are two rows of galleries.
The story containing the clerestory windows crowns the whole; so that
there are five horizontal divisions in the nave.--I give these details,
because they indicate the decided difference of order which exists
between the Norman and the English Gothic; a difference for which I have
not been able to assign any satisfactory cause.
The tombs that were originally in the choir, commemorating Charles Vth,
of France; Richard Coeur de Lion; his elder brother, Henry; and William,
son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, were all removed in 1736, as interfering
with the embellishments then in contemplation. The first of them alone
was preserved and transferred to the Lady-Chapel, where it has
subsequently fallen a victim to the revolution. The others are wholly
destroyed; nor could Ducarel find even a fragment of the effigies that
had been upon them; but engravings of these had fortunately been
preserved by Montfaucon[81], from whom he has copied them.
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