"_Persons of little skill did expect, I believe, something
they had been used to in Gothic structures, and ladies think nothing
well without an edging._" He urged that he had already terminated the
building, and that his design of pairs of pedestals in continuation of
the pilasters would better resist the wind. As in other matters, he
had to give way; and the difference in the effect cannot be judged
from mere illustrations.[74] The four angles, where the transepts
join, are filled up with the huge supporting bastion-like piers of the
dome; and internally are left, so to speak, hollow; that at the
south-west being utilised as a staircase, and the others on the ground
floor as vestries.

No roof is visible from below. The actual roof of oak and lead was so
flattened as to be invisible in accordance with the ideas of the
architect. "_No Roofs almost but Spherick raised to be visible._"
"_The Ancients affected Flatness._" "_No Roofs can have Dignity enough
to appear above a Cornice, but the Circular._"[75]

We now come to that peculiarity upon which so much adverse criticism
has been bestowed. The usual observer will wonder why there are niches
instead of windows in the upper stage, as light is so much needed. On
entering the interior he will notice that the height of the aisles
does not correspond with the exterior; and on ascending to the Stone
Gallery will ascertain that this upper stage of the exterior is not
part of the actual wall of the church, which stands back some thirty
feet. It is, in fact, a screen or curtain wall; the lower stage alone
is the wall of the aisles, and the disfiguring square openings with
which the pedestals below the niches are pierced, give light to the
passages and galleries between the aisles and the roof. Externally one
is supposed to see the wall of the cathedral; in reality one sees the
lower story forming the wall, and an upper story in continuation made
to look as though the church were immediately behind, but in reality
quite disengaged from it. The following is an able specimen of the
adverse criticisms that have been directed against this curtain: "It
is a mere empty show with nothing behind it, and when once this is
known it is impossible to forget it, or to have the same feeling
towards the building which a spectator might have, despite its defects
of detail, who believed its external mass to represent its interior
arrangements."[76] Yet an attentive study of the "Parentalia" ena