The groining ribs are very bold, and well moulded. There is no triforium, and the clerestory windows come down to a string-course just above the points of the main arches. They are of two lights, with a circle in the arched head, and their rear arches are moulded and carried on engaged jamb-shafts. The transepts have rose-windows in the bays next the choir, and lancet-windows in the north and south bays, and the carved abacus is carried over these as a label. There seem to have been rose windows round the principal apse at a lower level than the other clerestory windows; but only one of these is visible on either side, owing to the reredos: and I found it impossible to get any near exterior view of the east end, owing to the way in which it is built against by houses.

The west front had a large rose-window, which has been blocked up, and it still retains a noble doorway, of which I shall have to speak more in detail presently.

The north transept is now the least altered part of the church, and in the extreme simplicity of its bold buttresses, the refined beauty of its sculptured doorway, and the well-proportioned triplet which fills the upper part of the wall, it recalls to mind an English building of the thirteenth century. Unfortunately the gable has been destroyed, and the walls and buttresses are now finished with the straight line of the eaves. Almost the only peculiarity in the detail here is the wide, external splay of the windows between the glass and the jamb-shafts in the centre of the monials. The south transept has a triplet similar to that in the north transept, and has also lost its gable, and, being more shut in than the other, is perhaps the most picturesque in effect. A narrow lane leads up to it along the east wall of the cloister, and this, turning abruptly when it reaches the church, passes under a broad archway, which forms the south front of a porch, and then, out of an eastern archway, the street goes on again, twisting and turning in a fashion which is not a little eccentric. The exterior of the eastern apse retains its buttresses of slight projection, which run up to, and finish under, the eaves-cornice, which is carried, as all the cornices throughout the church are, upon boldly-moulded corbels.

It is only at some distance from the cathedral that anything is well seen of the turrets and tower, which give it most of the character it possesses. The west end had, I think, two small square towers, finished with octagonal turrets of smaller diameter than the towers. Of these the south-western still remains, but on the north side a lofty brick steeple was erected in the eighteenth century. Another turret is strangely placed over the centre of the principal apse. This is octangular in plan, with lancet-windows in the cardinal sides, and the sides of its spire pierced with two rows of small lights. The tile-roof of the apse slopes up on all sides from the eaves to the base of this turret; and, novel as its position is, it seemed to me to be well chosen and effective.[393] Other turrets rise out of the chapels which have sprung up round the church, and these, with the altered form of almost all the roofs, give a strange, informal, and disjointed look to the whole cathedral, which is eminently the reverse of attractive. Nevertheless the old work is there, and only requires a moderate amount of attention in order to understand the whole general character of the original scheme.

There are three grand doorways, one to each transept, and one at the west end. The former are not placed in the centre of the gable, but close to the western side of the transept, either, as is most probable, from a proper desire to leave space in front of the altars of the small transept chapels, or because then, as now, the ground was covered with houses, which made it impossible to place them centrally.

The finest of the three doorways is in the centre of the west front of the church, and its opening is more than nine feet in the clear, each of the jambs having eight shafts in square recesses. Two corbels support the tympanum, which has now no sculpture, nor any signs of ever having had any, and the arch has eight orders of sculptured moulding. The capitals of the columns in the jambs are all sculptured with subjects in a very exquisite fashion. There is here no grotesqueness or intentional awkwardness, but extreme beauty of design, simplicity of story, and fitness for the position chosen. The abaci are carved throughout with conventional foliage, well arranged and delicately cut. I know little even of French carving of the thirteenth century which surpasses this beautiful work, and none anywhere which more entirely deserves our admiration, or which may more worthily kindle our emulation. It is true, indeed, that here as elsewhere the cold formal critic may come and prove to his own satisfaction that some portions of the work are not academically correct: on the other hand, it is equally true that it is not academically cold and soulless, for the men who wrought here wrought of their love and enthusiasm, and not merely because they were drilled and paid, and they afford us, therefore, an example not to be despised of the truths, that in art enthusiasm is worth more than skill, and feeling more than knowledge; truths specially valuable in these days, when men fancy they can convert all who call themselves architects into artists, not by making them rejoice in their work, but simply by teaching them how to draw.

The subjects in the capitals are arranged in the following order:—Nos. 1 to 8 are those in the left or northern jamb, and Nos. 9 to 16 those in the right or southern jamb. Nos. 1 and 9 are next the opening, and Nos. 8 and 16 the extreme capitals right and left of the centre.

1.The Creation of Angels.
2.Do. of Earth, Stars, &c.
3.Do. of Trees.
4.Do. of Birds and Beasts.
5.Do. of Adam.
6.Do. of Eve.
7.The Fall.
8.Eve sleeping with a fig-leaf in her hand, and the Serpent mocking her.
9.Expulsion from Paradise.
10.Adam tilling, Eve spinning.
11.Cain and Abel sacrificing.
12.Cain killing Abel.
13.God cursing Cain.
14.Cain, a fugitive.
15.Entry into the Ark.
16.The Sacrifice of Abraham.

The two corbels which support the tympanum have on their face angels blowing trumpets, and under them two lions, eating, one of them two wyverns, the other a man. The archivolt has a series of eight figures carved on key-stones at its intersection. These are—beginning with the lowest—(1) the Agnus Dei, (2) the Blessed Virgin, (3) an angel, (4) a martyr, (5) a king, (6) a bishop, and (7) another king. On the sides the archivolt has on the left the Resurrection, and the happiness of the blessed, who are all represented in pairs; and on the right, the tortures of the damned, full of terror and horror of every kind. In the first rank of these unhappy ones are two bishops and an abbat learning the truth of our Lord’s aweful saying, “Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched”—a saying practically ignored by our sculptors and carvers at the present day, who seem to believe in no Last Judgment, no masculine saints, and nothing but female angels; so far, at least, as one can judge by the figures with which they cover so profusely the walls of some of our new churches. The outer order of the archivolt has angels all round it, with crowns and sceptres in their hands. There can be little doubt, I suppose, that the tympanum was intended to have a sculpture, or, perhaps, had a painting of a sitting figure of our Lord in Judgment; without this figure the whole scheme wants the key-note, to give tone and significance to all its varied story. With it there would be few doorways which would be altogether finer or more worshipful than this.