width, partly through the low and crushing shape of the vaulting-arch. The
vault, it must be remembered, is an imitation of an imitation, a modern
copy of a wooden roof made to imitate stone. This imitation of stone
construction in wood runs through the greater part of the church; it comes
out specially in the transepts, where a not very successful attempt is
made to bring the gable windows within the vault--the very opposite to the
vast space lost in the roofs at Lincoln. Yet with all this, many noble
views may be got in York nave and transepts, provided only the beholder
takes care never to look due east or west. The western view is still
further injured by the treatment of the west window--in itself an
admirable piece of tracery--which fits into nothing, and seems cut through
the wall at an arbitrary point. But the nave elevation, taken bay by bay,
is admirable. Looking across out of the aisle--the true way to judge--the
real height at last comes out, and we are reminded of some of the most
stately minsters of France....



DURHAM [Footnote: From "English Note Books." By arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's works, Houghton, Mifflin Co.
Copyright, 1870 and 1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


Durham Cathedral has one advantage over the others I have seen, there
being no organ-screen, nor any sort of partition between the choir and
nave; so that we saw its entire length, nearly 500 feet, in one vista. The
pillars of the nave are immensely thick, but hardly of proportionate
height, and they support the round Norman arch; nor is there, as far as I