On closer examination, the barbarous style of the sculpture forces
itself upon the eye. Towards the western end of the building the
capitals are comparatively plain: they become more elaborate on
approaching the choir. Some of them are imitations or modifications (and
it may even be said beautiful ones) of the Grecian model; but in general
they are strangely grotesque. Many represent quadrupeds, or dragons, or
birds, and commonly with two bodies, and a single head attached to any
part rather than the neck. On others is seen "the human form divine,"
here praying, there fighting; here devouring, there in the act of being
devoured; not uncommonly too the men, if men they must be called, are
disfigured by enormous heads with great flapping ears, or loll out an
endless length of tongue.--One is almost led to conceive that Schedel,
the compiler of the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, had a set of Norman capitals
before his eyes, when he published his inimitable series of monsters.
His "homines cynocephali," and others with "aures tam magnas ut totum
corpus contegant," and those again whose under lips serve them as
coverlids, may all find their prototypes, or nearly so, in the carvings
of St. Georges.

The most curious sculptures, however, in the church, are two square
bas-reliefs, opposite to one another, upon the spandrils of the arches,
in the walls that divide the extremities of the transepts into different
stories[4]. They are cut out of the solid stone, in the same manner as
the subjects on the block of a wood-engraving: one of these tablets
represents a prelate holding a crosier in his left hand, while the two
fore-fingers of the right are elevated in the act of giving the
blessing; the other contains two knights on horseback, jousting at a
tournament. They are armed with lance and buckler, and each of them has
his head covered with a pointed helmet, which terminates below in a
nasal, like the figures upon the Bayeux tapestry.--This coincidence is