CHAPTER II.
THE EXTERIOR.
The visitor who wishes to obtain, at first sight, the most impressive view of the Cathedral Church of St. Alban, should alight at the London and North-Western Station, at which all the trains from Euston and many of those from King's Cross arrive. This station is about half a mile south of the city, and from it a road runs up Holywell Hill, which, passing eastwards of the church, leads to the centre of the city. But a road running off to the left before reaching the top of the hill leads past the south side to the entrance at the west front of the Cathedral. Seen from the south the church, though it does not actually stand quite on the summit, seems to crown with its enormous length the ridge of hill to the north. Most of those who visit St. Albans for the first time feel a sense of disappointment. The church has no far-projecting buttresses to give light and shade, no flying buttresses or pinnacles like those that lend such a charm to most French and many English churches. All is severely plain, partly on account of the very early time at which the greater part of the existing church was built, partly on account of the material used for its walls. Abbot Paul of Caen, who designed it, trusted entirely to mass and proportion for the effect he wished to produce. But we do not see it as he designed it, and possibly built it. When we remember that he came from Caen, and seems to have used St. Stephen's Church, at that time recently built by Duke William, as a model, though he planned his own church on a grander scale, he must have contemplated two western towers even if he did not erect them—though, as previously stated, there is a division of opinion on the part of authorities on this subject. These western towers, if they were built, as well as the central one, would be crowned by pyramidal caps; and such towers, finely proportioned, would give the church the height which it so much needs, and the lack of which we feel so acutely to-day. The raising of the roofs at the time of the restoration to their original pitch was an undoubted gain, for without it the building looked lower and longer even than it does now. The church as we see it has been sadly injured by Lord Grimthorpe's work at both ends of the transepts, and whatever may be said about the western front in itself, yet no one can deny that, had the church been flanked by two towers standing, as at Wells and Rouen, outside the line of the aisles, even though the front itself were as plain as that of St. Stephen's at Caen, it would have been far more impressive.
There is another point in which the church as it exists differs from the church as it might have been seen soon after Abbot Paul had built it. Then its walls were covered without as well as within with plaster, within richly decorated with colour, and without whitewashed. How different it must have looked with its vast mass seen from a distance rising above the wooded slopes, white as a solid block of Carara marble gleaming in the sun, and the lead-covered roofs of nave, transept, choir, and towers shining with a silvery lustre. Many modern restoring architects strongly object to plaster, and many a rough wall both external and internal, which the builder never intended to be seen, has been scraped and pointed under the idea that plaster is a sham, which it is not, unless indented lines are drawn on it to make it appear like blocks of ashlar. The rich red of the Roman brick in St. Albans walls and towers is so delightful, that perhaps we may think Scott did well in abandoning his idea of replastering them; yet nothing could have so entirely altered the general appearance of the building as this scraping away of the plaster. Besides the general view from Holywell Hill, there are two other distant points of view which should not be missed: one from Verulam woods, to the south-west; and one from the fields in which the ruins of Sopwell Nunnery stand. From this latter point it looks best after sunset on a cloudless evening, when the tower stands up in majestic grandeur against the saffron sky, and looking at it one can well imagine how much grander it must have looked when the tower bore some fitting termination, either the Norman pyramid or the later octagon, or even possibly the wooden spire of the Hertfordshire spike order which succeeded it.