of white light showing through the lancet of the centre, we may
be allowed a doubt whether Tintern or York could have compared with
it." Add to this picture the movable hangings and decorations of its
many altars, and we cannot honestly attribute the coldness of the
present effect to any fault in the original design. Elsewhere this
austerity of monochrome is modified to a great extent by the variety
(anachronisms though they be) of later architectural insertions.
Salisbury, through the very purity of its design, especially suffers
from its translation from chromatic harmony to monotone, for although
possibly the architectural details are thereby rendered more apparent,
yet the exaggeration of what is after all but the skeleton of the
building, destroys the effect of the whole as its architect imagined
it.

Clustered columns of unpolished Purbeck marble on a quatrefoil plan,
with smaller detached shafts of lustrous marble at the cardinal
points, support, on either side, the ten great arches of the first
story of the nave. These polished shafts are generally in two pieces,
with a brass ring covering the joint; Francis Price discusses, at
great length, this constant feature of the whole building, and points
out, that although most of the shafts were probably not in place until
after the masonry was fairly set, yet frequently subsequent settlement
has crushed them; although, in the nave, the main piers in small
blocks laid according to the natural bed of the stone, are still
perfectly sound. The large arches are gracefully moulded with masses
of carved foliage at the intersections.

[Illustration: THE NAVE--SOUTH SIDE.]

In the nave of this cathedral we have a very uncommon feature in the
connected base of the main columns, which was doubtless introduced to
aid in distributing the weight over a larger surface, and so to
overcome the treacherous character of the foundation.

The triforium, which, from its style, naturally suggests comparison
with Westminster, and the Angel Choir of Lincoln, is simple, but
extremely beautiful. Each of its rather flat-pointed arches, equalling
in span that of the main arch below, is subdivided into pairs, which
again each inclose two smaller ones. These are decorated with trefoils
and quatrefoils, alternately with cinquefoils and octofoils.
Immediately above the carving, at the intersection of the main arches,
is a corbelled head, from which rises a triple vaulting-shaft with
foliated