We may remember, as we stand here, that Cranmer was unfrocked in this quadrangle.
Entering through the porch in Tom Quad, cut through one of the canonical houses, we come into a sort of ante-chapel with the organ screen before us. Passing under the screen we have an unbroken view of the Nave, the Choir with its wonderful ceiling and the handsome wheel-window rising above the arcade and two round-headed windows at the east end.
“Christ Church is the smallest of our cathedrals; for even with the new ante-chapel it measures about 175 feet in length. Instead of being of the usual cruciform plan, it is now almost square,—in fact, the length from the reredos to the organ-screen is 132 feet, while the breadth across from the Latin Chapel to St. Lucy’s Chapel is 108 feet. The church is made up of the shortened nave with its two aisles, and ante-chapel, the central tower, the north transept with its one aisle, the south transept, and the eastern half of the church, which itself contains no less than six divisions,—the choir, with its two aisles, the Lady-Chapel on the north, and the Latin Chapel (or St. Catherine’s) on the north again of that, while on the south is the small chapel of St. Lucy.
“If the unusual appearance of the cathedral is partly due to Wolsey’s destruction, it is partly due also to its being used as a college chapel, and partly to the fact that in general plan, and to some extent in detail, it is Ethelred’s design, commenced seventy years before the great developments of Norman architecture began.”—(P. D.)
We stop at the west end of the north aisle of the nave to examine the one remaining window designed by Van Ling.
“There are various opinions about this window, which represents Jonah sitting under his gourd, and the town of Nineveh in the distance. We must confess to a great admiration for it; the foliage is fine and rich, and if it is a little over-strong in its green, that only makes it more characteristic of its age. And, however that may be, there cannot be two opinions as to beauty of the town in the background, which reminds one irresistibly of Dürer; and, with its rich brown houses, bluish roofs, touches of greenery, and fair purple hills beyond, makes the right-hand light of the window a picture of which one never wearies. The whole is leaded in rectangular panes, like Bishop King’s window.”—(P. D.)
We now cross to the west end of the south aisle of the nave to see Burne-Jones’s Faith, Hope and Charity window, a memorial to Edward Denison (died 1870), son of the Bishop of Salisbury, and a pioneer worker in the East End of London.
“The figure of Hope has a greyish-blue drapery, varied in tint and diapered with the pattern of a flower in stain. The scarf floating round the figure is sky-blue in tone and lighter than the dress. The figure of Charity has a ruby over-mantle, with a white dress underneath; while the figure of Faith has a blue dress beautifully and richly diapered, the upper portion with a sumptuous Venetian design familiar on the brocades of the Sixteenth Century, and the lower portion with a sprig of foliage. The tone of the backgrounds is a rich, warm green, and is very carefully painted with foliage, and the contrast yielded by
