not here form a distinct intermediate story, but a gallery is carried through the thickness of the walls of the clerestory itself. Each compartment of this clerestory presents two lancet windows to the exterior, faced, towards the interior, by an arcade of five arches, the whole being constructed in the Earliest Pointed style.

No part of the body of the cathedral appears to have possessed a vaulted stone roof; the timbers of its construction were probably decorated, and left open.

The chapter-house must also be referred to the same Early Pointed age and style. If I may venture to assign an exact date to the portions I have just described, I should be inclined to assign the construction of the western façade to the episcopate of William Saltmarsh, from 1185 to 1193, and the interior of the nave and the chapter-house to his successor, Henry, elevated to the see from the priorate of Abergavenny in 1193, and holding it till 1219.1 I should consider the chapter-house as his latest work. This presents a square pile of two stories; the lower story has a vaulted roof, springing from a central cylindrical column; it is lighted by narrow trefoil windows.

It is a remarkable fact that this cathedral presents no transepts, and is therefore destitute of the usual feature which imparts to the ground plan of such buildings their general cruciform character.

The Lady Chapel will require the next notice in pursuing chronologically the history of the architecture of our cathedral, as this is constructed in the earliest variety of the style which immediately succeeded to the First Pointed order displayed in the portions before described. This style has been usually denominated the Early Decorated; but it has always appeared to me to present a character so distinctly marked, and of such general prevalence throughout the close of the thirteenth and

1 This date will assign a period of at least eighty years to the general construction of the present fabric of our cathedral, between its commencement in 1188, and its completion at the end of the twelfth century.

ARCH. CAMB., NEW SERIES, VOL. I.

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beginning of the fourteenth centuries, as to require a peculiar appellation. I have, therefore, myself, always designated it the Tangential style-deriving this name from the most marked and characteristic feature in the tracery of the windows employed in it. These uniformly consist of two or more lancet lights, always supporting on the back of their arches incumbent circles, (including cuspidated mouldings,) and always resting upon them in tangents; for the intersecting lines common in the later geometrically decorated tracery, are always studiously excluded from this earlier style. I have found this designation generally approved by my architectural friends. The most beautiful portions of Lincoln Cathedral afford splendid specimens of this Tangential style. Its earliest examples are found in portions of Salisbury, constructed about 1230, and it continued to prevail till the middle of the fourteenth century, when it is exhibited in the grand Dom-Kirch of Cologne the very noblest triumph of Pointed architecture. Our Lady Chapel belongs to the earlier period of the Tangential style. It was probably constructed by W. de Breos, the bishop of our diocese, who died 1280, and was buried close to the altar. It has on the sides long doublelighted windows, with the Tangential quatrefoil circle interposed, with Purbeck lateral shafts. The eastern window is modern, and replaces an abomination intruded in the last century, in the pseudo-Italian style, and has been copied from an example of the same style in the Cathedral of York. The Lady Chapel has a handsome stone vaulted roof, of which I have already noticed the deficiency in the nave.

The extension of the side-aisles to the east of the chapter-house, so as to skirt the presbytery, and the arches of communication, which we have described as so strangely cut through the original walls in this part, may, from the mouldings employed, be referred to the period between 1320 and 1350, as may the windows of the Middle Decorated style, generally interpolated throughout the side-aisles. These windows are of the

pattern most common in that age, divided by mullions into three lights, with quatrefoils superimposed between their arches, resting on their ogee curves.

The reredos behind the high altar, consisting of a double row of arched pannels, flanked by two elegant side arches of entrance to the space behind, of which the cuspidated moulding is singularly light, being so much undercut as slightly to detach it from the upper mouldings with which it is connected, appear, from the general character of their execution, to belong rather to the Later Decorated than to the Perpendicular style, though by Browne Willis (in whose time it was surmounted by a third tier of niches) referred to Bishop Marshall, in the reign of Henry VII. His grounds for this opinion were the occurrence of roses, the devices of the Tudor family, emblazoned on the pannels; but it is easy to suppose that these, and other decorations, may have been added by that prelate to an earlier structure, as we have it on record that he had been engaged in the general embellishment of the choir.

If my opinion be correct, our cathedral can claim possession of only one genuine example of the Tudor age, namely, the now only remaining tower, flanking the western façade on the north. This tower was erected by the munificence of Jasper Tudor, uncle of Henry VII., and forms a fair example of the gracefully-proportioned towers, the favourite architectural feature of that period. It was originally crowned, as the finest specimens of that age usually are, with an open parapet, described by Browne Willis as exactly similar to that still remaining on the parochial church of Cardiff. The above author strongly contrasts the neglect of our prebendaries of his day, as to this and the other architectural beauties committed to their hands-for I cannot say care with the more tasteful and conscientious conduct of the civic authorities of the neighbouring town in this respect. Such neglect soon led to ruin; and the storms, which prevailed in 1740, swept away the tottering remains of this graceful ornament.

The history of our cathedral has now been conducted through the period of its growth and prosperity, and we have next to proceed through that of decay and dilapidation; for the age which, by the spiritual historian of the Church, is hailed as the æra of religious reformation, must still be wept over by the ecclesiological antiquary as the evil days of sacrilegious destruction, and architectural deformity.

The great first cause of these evils in our own case was the infamous episcopate of Anthony Kitchen, from 1545 to 1566. "Fundi nostri calamitas," as his successor Godwin justly terms him in his "History of English Prelates." The times in which he lived might well have tried the man even of real principle, and moral resolution; in him they only developed a congenial spirit of tergiversation and dishonesty. He had acted as a bigotted and persecuting Papist in the Romanist days of Mary, and, on the accession of her sister Elizabeth, was the only one of those bishops permitted to retain their sees through the previous reign, who again was ready to resume the Protestant faith, prompt to assist at Elizabeth's coronation, and to vote for and subscribe the act for the ecclesiastical supremacy of the queen. He thus firmly clung to his see, like the ivy to the oak, and for the same purpose-of absorbing and exhausting its vital nourishment; for the one great employment of his episcopate appears to have been the alienation, for his own benefit, of the episcopal property. The property of the chapter also appears to have suffered materially at the same time, though far less than that of the bishopric. Insufficient endowments will, I am afraid, under the general condition of our nation, be found to lead to inefficient administration; and the consequence of this destruction of our resources was a long neglect of our services and our fabric. Browne Willis mentions, in 1720, that a few pipes, and other fragments of our organ were, in his days, scattered over its loft, and that the choral services had been long discontinued, while the building, in which they should have been performed, was

verging, without an effort made to arrest its progress, to ruin.

The storms, which prevailed in the early portion of the eighteenth century, co-operated with this state of things, and accelerated the consummation. The storm of 1705 shook many of the walls; while, on February 6, 1722, the southern tower was reduced to a mass of ruins, and much of the roof of the nave, and a portion of the south aisle, shared in the destruction. A higher sense of official obligations, although, unhappily, not a more enlightened taste, had now begun to prevail; and Bishop Tyler, during the early progress of these dilapidations, had commenced earnest endeavours to procure resources for the work of repair, and, through the assistance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, had obtained £1000 from George I.; and, in the time of his successor, Bishop John Harris (1728 to 1738), these subscriptions are said to have amounted to £7000-a sum which, if judiciously employed, would, at that period, have been sufficient to have repaired all injuries, and to have preserved the ancient features of the venerable fabric. But in this age, unhappily, the public taste had been altogether incompetent to appreciate the merits of the splendid architecture of the middle ages. Smollett, one of the most popular writers of the day, introduces one of his principal characters declaiming against York Minister itself as an unsightly pile, in the Gothic, or Saracenic, or some other barbarous style, and insisting on its manifest inferiority to some modern Italianized buildings in the same town. In this very spirit Bishop Harris employed one Wood, an architect of Bath, to Italianize our cathedral-to efface its Gothic features, and impart to it the classical elegance of his own Pump-Room. A letter from a Rev. A. Davis, to Browne Willis, describes the progress of this work of the art then prized in the following highly laudatory terms:-" The church, in the inside, as far as it is ceiled and plastered, looks exceeding fine; and, when finished, it will, in the judgment of most people who have scen it, be a very neat and elegant church."