Cathedral close

“ With my passion for Gothic architecture, the beautiful little cathedral, which the authorities were restoring Judiciously, was a delight, and it was all the more interesting as containing one of those curiosities of human civilization which have now become rare. In one corner of the edifice is a "holy well," the pilgrimages to which in the middle ages were, no doubt, a main source of the wealth of the establishment. The attendant shows, in the stonework close to the well, the end of a tube coming from the upper part of the cathedral ”

“ As we see it now, within its grassy close, the cathedral is a singularly perfect work, chiefly of the thirteenth century, rich above all other English cathedrals in delicate sculpture, and with sixty carved miserere seats that display the sweetest artistic fancy, the closest study of natural forms, and the most exquisite craftsmanship in wood-carving to be found in England. ”

“ The cloisters are 150 feet square, and the open close about them is one of the finest in England. The interior is very solid in appearance, yet as well decorated as any in the kingdom. Indescribable is the solemnity of grand effect. How complete all is; and how of eternity itself do the great Norman columns speak! Had we not already employed so much eulogy in praise of other cathedrals, we now could use adjectives to advantage; but language has never yet adequately described a cathedral's interior. There is more to the thing than matters of curiosity and a tame entertainment. ”

“ It is in the pointed Gothic style, built of granite. There is an imposing tower, and a fine rose window. In the cloisters there are interesting specimens of ajuléjo work, and highly ornamented pillars. The mosaics represent “The Song of Solomon,” and are well worth attention.
The cathedral is in the form of a cross, with a wide nave, and several chapels. There is a marble floor. The interior is without any impressive objects of art, and much of it is modern. Close to the Cathedral is the Bishop’s Palace, with an interesting staircase. ”

“ The cathedral itself is the heart of the charming old place—so rich in tone, so impressive in outline, so profusely yet delicately adorned, it rose at the end of the long market-square, shedding on it, even through the grey sheets of rain, the warmth of its high tawny masses. The design of the western front is so full and harmonious that it effaces from memory the less salient impression of the interior. ”

“ In the nave is a beautiful pulpit, built in 1486, and covered with little statues, delicately carved, and not far from it the organ, up midway between the floor and arched ceiling. The perspective view in these old cathedrals is grand, and figures hardly give one an idea of their vastness. This cathedral is five hundred and twenty-five feet long, one hundred and ninety-five feet in width, and is one of the finest of those wonderful monuments of religious art that rose during the middle ages. ”

“ These granite saints and bishops, with their mutilated fingers and broken noses, seem to be bearing a silent, melancholy witness against that disposition in human nature, which, instead of making clean the cup and platter, breaks them altogether.
The roof of the cathedral is a splendid specimen of carving in black oak, wrought in panels, with leaves and inscriptions in ancient text. The church could once boast in other parts (so says an architectural work) a profusion of carved woodwork of the same character, which must have greatly relieved the massive plainness of the interior. ”

“ We walked to the cathedral—a dark red heavy building, built almost entirely of brick, with one high tower; an open gallery surmounting its façade, which exhibits, one above the other, three ranges of porticoes, the pillars of the lowest and central one springing from the loins of guardian lions. Within, above the principal entrance, is some curious carving. The church is large without being handsome; 224 two thirds of the roof, glaring with fresh whitewash, contrast with the dark grey columns. The choir has its frescoes still ”

“ The south sacristy door is a fine specimen of Gothic work. Unlike the exterior effect, nothing obtrudes inside this great cathedral. The eye on entering looks straight up to the east, conscious as it travels there, of great pillars rising into the gloom of the vault above, of fine glass and restful solemnity, in which even the chapels in the aisles are lost, to be discovered later on only when searched for. ”

“ The decayed stones are taken out, and new ones replaced, and the carvings also are renewed where necessary, so that future ages may see what so delights us. The two towers are forty feet square and two hundred high, and you ascend by a staircase of four hundred steps. The form of the church is that of the Latin cross. Its dimensions inside are four hundred feet by one hundred and forty, and the height is one hundred feet. All through the cathedral is a line of Gothic arches supported by columns, and, as you enter the great door, you see the entire edifice. ”

“ All these puerilities do not lack charm, especially when they keep us in the cool shadow of a cathedral, at the hottest and most blinding hour of the day....
The day declines. It is the moment when all the beauty of the cathedral is revealed. Now the contrasts of lights and shades become more moving. A soft green clarity fills the choir, and lends to its architecture a more subtle and airy grace; it filters through the high openings of the nave, illuminates the pointed arches of the vaulting, accentuates the ramifications of the arches; the whole structure appears lighter and more triumphal. ”

“ Innumerable other works and wonders there are, and the sacristies contain great value of goldsmiths' products; but, unless it be made a subject of long artistic study, the fundamental charm of the cathedral consists in its general aspects, its mysterious perspectives, its proportions so simple and grandiose; the isolated pictures formed at almost any point by jewelled and candle-lit chapels sparkling dimly through a permanent dusk, rainbowed here and there by the light from old stained windows. ”

“ Seldom in France do we find the cathedral so regally free of surrounding buildings. No shabby structures lean unworthy heads against its old grey walls, and where, on the north side, the canons' library, with its crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century, nestles under the wing of the church, the effect is entirely pleasing. ”

“ In addition to an internal narthex, the cathedral has, in front of its tower, another groined sort of passage-way, opening to the west with six arches, and to the north and south with one arch. There is a second stage above these arches, and then from behind this mass rises the steeple. The whole of this part of the building is Romanesque, as, indeed, is the substance of the entire church though it has been much mutilated by modern additions and alterations. The interior is painfully neglected and dirty, though it is, I believe, the only Catholic church in the place. ”

“ Shrines and chapels, set in grand, heavy frames of pillared architecture, stand all along the aisles and transepts, and these seem in many instances to have been built and enriched by noble families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above to denote the rank of one of its members. How much pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture and architecture! The cathedral is a religion in itself, —something worth dying for to those who have an hereditary interest in it. ”

“ The Gothic cathedral, thus contemplated in its native character and principles—established in unmoved security by the very agency of those forces which tend most directly to destruction, displays an evidence of science, perhaps, when the times are considered, the most wonderful in the whole history of intelligence. Never have the stereometric precepts of building—one of the most difficult branches of the art, been better exhibited than in these piles. Mass counteracts mass,—the very confliction of downward efforts upholds the reed-like column, and hangs on high the ponderous vault. ”

“ Parts of the old cathedral are, however, still standing. Between the tower of the new{288} temple and the episcopal palace, but unluckily weighted down by modern superstructures, stands the old façade, almost intact. The grossness of the structural work, the timid use of the ogival arch, the primitive rose window, and the general heaviness of the structure, show it to belong to the decadent period of the Romanesque style, when the artists were attempting something new and forgetting the lessons of the past. ”

“ This battered yet coherent little edifice has the touching look that resides in everything supremely old: it has arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dul- ness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. ”

“ The present cathedral was mainly built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its chief features are a nave with the most magnificent side-aisles in the kingdom, two transepts, a choir, a lady chapel, a large central tower, two bell towers, and a wonderfully fine chapter-house. During the last century it was twice nearly destroyed by fire, first by the act of a lunatic, and then by the carelessness of a workman.
The present structure takes rank with the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in the world.
Apart from the minster, the whole city teems with archaeological interest. ”

“ Each pinnacle of a Gothic cathedral is a little tower with its spire. As Ruskin has pointed out, the great vault of the cathedral nave, together with the pointed roof above it, is repeated in the entrance arch with its gable, and the same two elements appear in every statue-enshrining niche of the doorway. In classic architecture, as has been shown, instead of the arch and gable, the column and entablature everywhere recur under different forms. ”

“ The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. In like manner, all public facts are to be individualised, all private facts are to be generalised. ”

“ It is grand and imposing, and its great width and height impress the beholder with a feeling of reverence and awe. The windows are of painted glass. Most of them are ancient and dim-appearing, and probably were never of rich design or very brilliant color. Every part of this vast interior is in the best possible repair, and the utmost neatness prevails. The cathedral has a crypt, or basement, and centuries ago it was customary to hold services in it. By the payment of a sixpence each, persons are permitted to visit it in company with the verger ”

“ Through dreamy distances of chequered light and tangled shadow, the glance travels under a sort of spell, and unconsciously the fancy grows that you are gazing through the aisles of a vast cathedral illuminated by myriad and wondrously stained windows—not a cathedral wrought by the hands of man, nor one whose stillness was ever broken by his feverish tread, but the ruins of a colossal judgment hall, or place of worship, created by some long-gone superhuman race, of whose existence we retain no record. ”

“ Beautiful and imposing at all times is a Gothic cathedral, but never more so than when the trembling light of a winter moon throws around it a soft halo, just enough to make its grand proportions visible amid the surrounding gloom, while leaving all the finer details wrapt in sombre mystery. ”

“ The cathedral is surrounded by a high wall, the gates of which,--its eyelids,--are closed every night at a seasonable hour, at which the virtuous inhabitants are expected to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses within this hallowed precinct naturally bring a higher rent than those of the unsanctified and unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a realm of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, which lifts the least imaginative soul upward to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach; beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch high aloft, as if in emulation of the spire ”

“ The cathedral is not remarkable for its architecture. The façade has a semicircular termination, quadrants above the aisles, and an early Renaissance doorway. The stalls are carved and pierced like those at Arbe and Zara, but have lost the tops and the carved divisions. At each side is an ambo of stone supported on four columns, but with an octagonal body above, arcaded, with shafts at the angles. The arches are all round, but the change in the plan produces a curious pointed appearance in perspective in the lower arcade. ”

“ Its beauty persists. It triumphs over shadows and forces me to admire its powerful black harmony. It fills my window, it almost hides the sky. How explain why, even when enveloped in night, this cathedral loses nothing of its beauty? Does the power of that beauty transcend the senses, that the eye sees what it sees not?... ”

“ The cathedral, though it has suffered most severely from extensive alterations in the seventeenth century, has still preserved a most curious stone rood loft, debased in style, but still carrying out the principles of the old traditions. It was approached by two flights of steps, the choir being elevated over a crypt, which gives it a most imposing appearance. On the top of the first platform is an altar, and immediately over it a stone pulpit, with a brass lectern, on the left side, in the form of an eagle, doubtless for the deacon to sing the holy Gospel to the people. ”