ours and a half past midnight."

Next day the effort was resumed before daybreak; but by noon

"the continual failing of the shores showed, too plainly,
that the fall was inevitable."

Just before half-past one

"the spire was seen to incline slightly to the south-west,
and then to descend perpendicularly into the church, as one
telescope tube slides into another, the mass of the tower
crumbling beneath it. The fall was an affair of a few
seconds, and was complete at half-past one."

Such, briefly, is the record of the fall, which so admirably has been
related by Professor Willis, from whose work these extracts have been
taken.

Sir Gilbert Scott, [27] after the central tower had collapsed, was
consulted concerning its reconstruction. He examined the remains; and
by the great care his son Gilbert exercised in labelling and
registering all the moulded and carved stone that was discovered in
the debris, the new tower and spire was designed upon the pattern of
the old one. Old prints and photographs were used to help in this work
of building a copy of what had been lost. But this task could not have
been done had it not been that Mr. Joseph Butler, a former resident
architect and Surveyor to the Chapter, had made measured drawings of
the whole, which supplied actual dimensions that otherwise could not
have been recovered. These drawings had come into the possession of
Mr. Slater, the architect associated with Sir. G. Scott in the
rebuilding of the tower, and they enabled him

"to put together upon paper all the fragments with certainty
of correctness: so one thing with another, the whole design
was absolutely and indisputably recovered. The only
deviation from the design of the old steeple was this. The
four arms of the cross had been (probably in the fourteenth
century) raised some five or six feet in height, and thus
had buried a part of what had originally been the clear
height of the tower, and with it an ornamental arcading
running round it. I lifted out the tower from this
encroachment by adding five or six feet to its height; so
that it now rises above the surrounding roofs as much as it
originally did. I also omitted the partial walling up of the
belfry windows, which may be seen in old views." [28]

[27] See "Recollections," p. 309. Edited by his son, 1861.
[28] _Ibid._, p. 310.

These statements ha