The result is just what might have been expected. The place has been completely modernised. Chilly stone canopies cover the stalls; they are of the kind of workmanship which forty years ago was considered excellent. That is to say, they are covered with frigid, ungainly, and pompous ornament, cut with mechanical regularity, and without one trace of feeling or one line of beauty from beginning to end. Below, and between them, the choir is encumbered, much as it was before 1848, with rows of stalls, which are continued in the presbytery almost up to the tawdry brass altar-rails. Two more pale ghosts of medieval art front each other in complacent parody of the work their makers could not even copy—the pulpit and the bishop's throne. The former is Early Victorian; the latter is worse, it is a restoration of Perpendicular work so relentless that not a sign of the original conception remains. Plate-glass fills the tracery at the sides, and the door is a piece of solid swinging stone. On the completion of this terrible work, the restorers seem to have felt dimly the want of colour, which previously had been so abundant. They therefore proceeded to furnish with that peculiar musty red which used to cast a gloom over our childhood—red cushions on the seats, red cushions on the desks, red hassocks on the floor, red edges to the books, hot red in the bishop's throne, dull red on the altar, before the altar, and behind the altar, it is all red but the chilly white stone, and the all-pervading woodwork of the seats, which adds the muddy gloom of oak that has been stained and varnished to the miserable poverty of the whole.
The cause of all this desolation was just the ignorance of its promoters as to the functions of a cathedral. The choir was looked upon as a select church for the leading families of the town, and the seats in it were appropriated; the nave was a vast empty space that was never used for worship at all. Hence the organ on the screen, hence the setting back of the stalls, so that the choir might be widened, and more seats "rammed, jammed, crammed," to use Freeman's indignant words, into the space. Instead of the long continuous range of stalls which formerly existed, there are now groups of five under each arch, with the result that ten of the prebendaries are without accommodation. Such is the heavy legacy of blunders with which the dean and chapter are burdened. It will take many a year before the choir can be redeemed from its unfortunate state; but the present arrangement of the altar is a great improvement on its position only a few years ago, and no doubt similar measures will in time completely efface the traces of 1850.
Of the old woodwork the Misericords have alone escaped destruction. Sixty-four of these remain, fifty of which belonged to the prebendal stalls of the upper row, though they were removed from their proper position at the restoration. Sixty of the seats are now in the lower rows of the stalls, the other four are preserved in the library. It is enough to say of them that no finer examples of wood-carving can be seen in England. The following description of the wonderfully fresh and varied subjects was supplied by Mr St. John Hope for a paper read by Canon Church before the Society of Antiquaries in March 1896:—
South side, first row.—1, a goat (broken); 2, a griffin fighting with a lion(?); 3, a man in hood and drawers riding with his face to the tail of a barebacked horse; 4, a hawk preying on a rabbit; 5, a mermaid (unfinished); 6, two popinjays in a fruit tree; 7, an ape carrying a basket of fruit on his back (broken); 8, a double-bodied monster; 9, a dog-headed griffin; 10, two goats butting (unfinished); 11, a monkey holding an owl (unfinished); 12, two dragons interlocked and biting each other's tails; 13, an ewe suckling a lamb (unfinished); 14, a wyvern and a horse fighting. South side, second row.—15, a mermaid suckling a lion; 16, a man holding a cup? (broken), sitting on the ground, and disputing with another man holding a pouch; 17, a cat preying on a mouse (unfinished); 18, a monster with bat's wings; 19, a griffin devouring a lamb; 20, a puppy biting a cat; 21, a man in a contorted position upholding the seat; 22, a serious-looking dog; 23, a cat playing a fiddle; 24, a man seated on the ground and thrusting a dagger through the head of a dragon with feathered wings; 25, bust of a bishop, in amice, chasuble, and mitre (unfinished); 26, a peacock in his pride; 27, a fox preaching to four geese, one of which has fallen asleep (broken); 28, a cock crowing. North side, first row.—29, a lion dormant; 30, a dragon with expanded wings, asleep; 31, a man with his left eye closed, wearing a cloak and squatting on the ground with his hands on his knees; 32, a fox running off with a goose in his mouth; 33, head of a man with donkey's ears; 34, two monsters with male and female human heads, caressing (unfinished); 35, a man on his back upholding the seat with his right hand and right foot; 36, a lion with the ears of an ass; 37, a hawk scratching its head; 38, a sleeping cat (unfinished); 39, a woman with dishevelled hair and agonised expression, crouching on the ground with the right hand on her shoulder, the other extended; 40, a dragon with hairy belly biting his back; 41, two ducks addorsed, one with his beak open; 42, two dragons fighting (unfinished); 43, a bat's head (unfinished). North side, second row.—44, head of a man with bushy hair and beard, with a lion's leg growing out of each side; 45, a man in tunic and hood, lying on his side and clasping his hands; 46, a man in girded tunic, with his head downwards, upholding the seat with his back and left hand; 47, head of a lady with hair in a caul on each side, covered with a veil confined by an ornate fillet; 48, a gentle-looking lion; 49, a bat displayed; 50, head of an angel, with amice round neck and expanded wings; 51, a lion; 52, two doves about to drink from a ewer standing in a basin (unfinished); 53, a squirrel with a collar round his neck, trying to escape from a monkey who holds him by a cord; 54, a wood-pigeon feeding; 55, a man riding on a lion, to whose buttocks he is applying a whip; 56, a boar and a cat with cloven feet, walking in opposite directions; 57, an eagle displayed (unfinished); 58, head and shoulders of a man who upholds the seat with his hands; 59, a rabbit regardant; 60, a two-legged beast regarding its tail, which is formed of three oak-leaves on one stem. In the Library.—61, a man in hood and loose tunic, kneeling on the ground and thrusting a spear down the throat of a dragon; 62, a boy in gown, with long, wavy hair, lying on his side and drawing a thorn out of his left foot (of coarse late seventeenth-century work); 63, a dove or pigeon feeding her young; 64, a sorrowful-looking king sitting cross-legged on a cushion between two rampant griffins, who are secured by straps buckled round their necks.
Glass in the Choir.—Over the high altar is a superb specimen of the Jesse window. It is so intricate, that at first nothing can be distinguished in the glow of jewelled colour but the twining branches of the vine, and a little time is needed to enter into the spirit of a window that is all the more enduring for not being very obvious. The following excellent description by Canon Church (in a sermon preached in the cathedral on May Day 1890) will make the legend easy to decipher:—
"In the central light are the foremost figures of the Bible story. At the base is the recumbent figure of Jesse with name inscribed, with head resting on hand as in meditation. From that figure, as from the vine stem, issues upward the leading shoot, bearing upon it the figures of the Virgin Mother crowned with ruby nimbus, and the Holy Child with gold nimbus, both under a golden canopy. Above, in line, is the Crucifixion. On either side, the waving tendrils of the vine shoots intertwine themselves in rings of light round figures of those who prepared the way for the advent of the Word Incarnate. On the lower tier, in line with Jesse, are, we may believe, the ancestors of Jesse. Amminadab and Obed are inscribed on two of the pedestals—others are nameless. Stately figures they are in face and form, in flowing mantles of green, and ruby and gold, like Arab chiefs, some with the Arab head-covering such as is worn to-day—figures such as some artist in the last crusading host might have seen and designed, so different from the conventional portraiture of Bible characters.
"In the second tier are the Kings and Prophets chosen to represent the heralds of the Babe of Bethlehem, the Word Incarnate. Three kings—David with his 'immortal harp of golden wires'; Solomon, with Temple model in his hand, in robes of emerald, and ruby, and gold, are on either side of the central Figures; and Jechonias, the link in the pedigree between the royal David and the captive exile. Three Prophets—Abraham, misplaced indeed in order of time, but most fitly in place as 'the father of the faithful, unto whom and through whom the gospel was before preached to the Gentiles' (Gal. iii. 8); Hosea, and Daniel. All these are clad in the magnificence of Oriental drapery, the colours of each pair on either side of the central light answering like to like. Some are looking upward, some are pointing with outstretched hand towards The Child, towards the Crucified One.
"There in central light in the mid-panel of the window is the Virgin Mother and the Holy Child, The Child born in Bethlehem the home of Jesse, not in David's royal Palace, the flowering shoot of the stem of Jesse. Now from His throne on His Mother's knee He looks out over the world and as with outstretched arms to embrace. A ray of white light on the Mother's head gives a natural halo of purity to Her 'the highly favoured' 'with grace replete,' whom all generations have called 'blessed,' as she looks down wondering on the Holy Child.
"A subdued and sadder colour seems to veil the subject of the highest panel in the central light. There is the green Cross in the background, and upon it are affixed the attenuated arms and the bent form of the Crucified—the head drooping on the breast. On either side of the Cross stand, the sorrowing Mother on the right, in attitude of calm resignation, very different from the conventional garb of mourning, and the exaggerated expression of grief in so many paintings; on the other hand St. John, in sadder colours and the gloom of grief. Again above, in two of the smaller six-cusped lights, are figures rising from the tomb, and in the two at the side are angels blowing trumpets calling to judgment. At the head and apex of the window are outstretched wings as of the Holy Spirit like the Dove brooding over the world re-created by the Word made Flesh, giving Himself for our redemption."
The clerestory windows contained a figure under a canopy in each of the lower lights. Four of these old windows remain. One light in the north-east window contains a St. George, thus described by Mr C. Winston (Arch. Soc., Bristol vol.): "He is clad in a surcoat which reaches to the knee. He wears a helmet, avant and rerebras, shin-pieces and sollerets of plate, or rather cuir boulli; the rest of his person is defended with mail, on his shoulders are aiglettes." In the next window are St. Egidias with very distended ears, and St. Gregory in a tiara. There are also two modern windows; a glaring one by Willement has St. Dunstan and St. Benignus, who were both abbots of Glastonbury and St. Honorius; another, by Bell, has Augustine, Ambrose, and Athanasius.