ct. We are too apt to think that Gothic art
cannot be individual without being eccentric, or interesting without
being heterogeneous ... but Salisbury is both grand and lovely, and
yet it is quiet, rational, and all of a piece, clear and smooth, and
refined to the point of utmost purity. No building in the world is
more logical, more lucid in expression, more restful to the mind and
eye."[7]

[Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST.
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._]

The number of its pillars, windows, and doorways is said to equal the
hours, days, and months of the year; hence the local rhyme,
attributed, on the authority of Godwin, to a certain Daniel Rogers:

"As many days as in one year there be,
So many windows in this church we see;
As many marble pillars here appear
As there are hours throughout the fleeting year;
As many gates as moons one year does view--
Strange tale to tell! yet not more strange than true."

Fuller, speaking of these, by a curious lapse falls into the vulgar
error of believing Purbeck marble to be an artificial product melted
and poured into moulds, says: "The cathedral is paramount of its kind,
wherein the doors and chapels equal the months, the windows the days,
the pillars and pillarets of fusile marble (an ancient art now
shrewdly suspected to be lost) the hours of the year; so that all
Europe affords not such an almanac of architecture. Once walking in
this church (whereof then I was prebendary) I met a countryman
wondering at the structure thereof. 'I once,' said he to me, 'admired
that there could be a church that should have so many pillars as there
be hours in the year, and now I admire more, that there should be so
many hours in the year as I see pillars in this church.'"

=The Nave.=--The first glimpse as we enter by the west door is
undoubtedly impressive, notwithstanding the absence of colour and the
lack of mystery for which the complete vista obtained at such a cruel
cost by Wyatt is insufficient compensation. The whole scheme of
decoration in its pristine state must have been extremely beautiful.
"If you can imagine it with the walls and piers exhibiting strong
contrasts of colour in the dark and polished Purbeck shafts and the
lighter freestones, the arches picked out with colours, the groining
elaborately decorated, and the whole lighted by brilliantly painted
windows with a preponderance of dark blue and ruby, together with a
flood