ore than a screen, but at first sight
appears to be the legitimate finish of the nave and aisles. A recent
critic, defending the facade in spite of its architectural isolation
from the building in its rear, points out that the chief objection to
the west front is that it is wanting in that repose and refinement of
detail which characterize the rest of the building, and that its
design is entirely out of keeping therewith, and also complains that
"the ragged outline at the angles produced by the high relief and
rather clumsy sections of the decorative detail has a very bad
effect." It has been suggested that as from the position of the site
there was never a chance of the building being seen from a
distance--owing to the level country around it, the projection of the
transepts and the group of the whole pile could never tell out as they
would had it been on a hill, therefore the form chosen was
deliberately adopted to give a factitious importance to the west front
on its own merits. The continental builders with much more lofty nave
and aisles, and with their habit of making the west door the principal
entrance, were able, by enriching its portal and decorating the
natural divisions of the building, to attain a stately form that
honestly fulfilled its purpose; here the magnificence is secured by
masking the low aisles of the nave with a wall that is a mere
theatrical adjunct, its simulated windows and its stringcourses
marking stories that do not exist. Apart from theoretical criticism,
it is not quite admirable in itself; the three doorways are hardly of
sufficient importance, the central window is somewhat larger than it
should be to accord with the scale of the whole facade, while the
apparently built up windows above the genuine windows of the nave
aisles, whose roofs have their apex about on a level with the sills of
the large central lancets, are as much frauds as any of those sham
windows in symmetrical Renaissance work, which so excite the ire of
ardent champions of Gothic purity.

It consists of five bays, of which the lateral ones are square
turrets, covered with arcades, and terminated by spires. The lower
story of the central bay is composed of three pedimented porches
deeply recessed, each with a niche in its gable. Above these is a
story of canopied trefoiled arches, with quatrefoil lozenges in
their centres. Over this arcade is the large west window, a triplet of
lancets with slender shafts and chevron or