knowledge created the greatest possible excitement. Other plans were
suggested; the mere removal of a single stone to make it more secure was
declared quite unnecessary; the taking down a gable to rebuild it was
denounced as Vandalism. Much strong language and many hard words were
used which had better be forgotten. It certainly seems difficult to
explain how the objectors to the course that had been decided upon could
write of the west front that it was "superficially, in a fair state of
preservation," or that it was "literally without a patch or blemish."
The present writer was for twenty years a member of the cathedral
foundation, and lived just opposite the west front. He made a special
study of the history and fabric of the cathedral. Hardly a year passed
without something falling down; sometimes a piece of a pinnacle,
sometimes a crocket or other ornament, sometimes a shaft. Old engravings
of the spires show the pinnacles broken. Many of the shafts are wanting.
Some have been replaced in wood. Many wholly new ones were put up by
Dean Monk. And concerning the north arch, which was notoriously the most
dangerous, Dean Patrick has recorded that Bishop Laney gave £100 toward
the repairing one of the great arches of the church porch "which was
faln down in the late times." Dean Monk also, in a memoir of his
predecessor Dean Duport,[19] speaks of the efforts of the cathedral body
to repair the devastation caused by the civil war, and says "in
particular one of the three large arches of the West Front, the beauty
of which is acknowledged to be without rival, having fallen down, it was
restored in all its original magnificence." In an account of the
cathedral published by the writer thirty years ago, he says of this
arch: "Its present state looks dangerous from below. The stones in the
arch have some sad gaps. It is tied up by iron bands, and further
protected within by a great number of wooden pegs, not of recent
construction. When last observed it leant forward 14½ inches." In 1893
he wrote: "there is no doubt that the security of the whole front is a