which necessitated that stately row of buttresses, but for a time it
is hard to think of anything but the splendour of colour and detail in
this vast aisleless nave, and we think of what Henry's college might
have been had the whole plan been carried out in keeping with this
perfect work. Wordsworth's familiar lines present themselves as more
fitting than prose to describe this consummation of the pain and
struggle of generations of workers since the dawn of Gothic on English
soil:

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the architect who planned--
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only--this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

When the sunlight falls athwart the great windows the tracery and the
moulded stonework on either side are painted with "the soft
chequerings" of rainbow hues, and the magnificent glass shows at its
best all its marvellously fine detail, as well as the beauty of its
colour. The whole range of twenty-six windows having been executed
under two contracts, dated 1516 and 1526, there was opportunity for