This has always been a daring procedure, but in this case it has been carried out with success, and gives the desired effect,—that of ampleness and height.
In the clerestory windows are found the rounded arches which mark the link which binds the Gothic arches elsewhere in the fabric with the earlier Romanesque style.
The vaulting is of the Gothic order throughout, with gracefully proportioned shafts and full-flowered capitals.
All this preserves the simple elements of early Gothic in so impressive a way that the observer will quite overlook, or at least make allowance for, the row of round-headed windows aloft.
The triforium gallery is a charming feature, and has seldom been found so highly developed outside of an early Gothic church. In general the feature is French, and this is perhaps the only example outside France which is so reminiscent of that variety frequently to be met with in the cathedrals of the Isle of France.
The triforium is pierced through to the nave by a series of double narrow arches enclosed[{185}] within a larger broad-framed arch, while in the transepts and choir the desired effect is accomplished by tripled arches with the same general scheme of arrangement.
With regard to furnishings and accessories, this great cathedral is singularly complete.
There is a highly ornate pulpit in sculptured wood which some will consider the peer of any seen elsewhere. It is decorated further by a series of painted wooden statues of the saints, Nicholas, Ambrose, Augustin, Gregory, and Jerome.
There is a fine custode covering a pyx, which is surmounted by a fifteenth-century baldaquin, and a tomb of a former canon, ornamented in bas-relief.
There is also a pair of baptismal fonts, enormous in size and said to be contemporaneous with the foundation of the cathedral.