tower. I remember at Furness Abbey I saw two tall pillars supporting a
broken arch, and thought it, the most majestic fragment of architecture
that could possibly be. But these pillars have a nobler height, and
these arches a greater sweep. What nonsense to try to write about a
cathedral!

There is a great, cold bareness and bleakness about the interior; for
there are very few monuments, and those seem chiefly to be of
ecclesiastical people. I saw no armed knights, asleep on the tops of
their tombs; but there was a curious representation of a skeleton, at
full length, under the table-slab of one of the monuments. The walls are
of a grayish hue, not so agreeable as the rich dark tint of the inside of
Westminster Abbey; but a great many of the windows are still filled with
ancient painted glass, the very small squares and pieces of which are
composed into splendid designs of saints and angels, and scenes from
Scripture.

There were a few watery blinks of sunshine out of doors, and whenever
these came through the old painted windows, some of the more vivid colors
were faintly thrown upon the pavement of the cathedral,--very faintly, it
is true; for, in the first place, the sunshine was not brilliant; and
painted glass, too, fades in the course of the ages, perhaps, like all
man's other works. There were two or three windows of modern
manufacture, and far more magnificent, as to brightness of color and
material beauty, than the ancient ones; but yet they looked vulgar,
glaring, and impertinent in comparison, because such revivals or
imitations of a long-disused art cannot have the good faith and
earnestness of the originals. Indeed, in the very coloring, I felt the
same difference as between heart's blood and a scarlet dye. It is a
pity, however, that the old windows cannot be washed, both inside and