KING WEST. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._]

There is a memorial tablet to Robert Anderson, "the Cumberland Bard,"
1770-1833. Born in Carlisle, he had but little schooling, and at ten
years of age he was earning wages as assistant to a calico printer;
later, he was bound apprentice to a pattern-drawer in his native city.
He went to London to pursue his calling, and he seems to have been led
to attempt to write poetry through hearing some imitation Scottish songs
sung at Vauxhall. He published his first volume in 1798, and his
Cumberland Ballads in 1805. His verses, not altogether destitute of real
poetry, are valuable for the pictures they give of obsolete manners and
customs of the district.

The #Choir.#--A low doorway in the eastern arch of the tower gives
entrance to the choir. Some of the woodwork of the stalls fills the
lower part of this arch, and the entrance has been placed towards the
north, so as to open exactly on the centre of the choir. In point of
beauty the choir compares favourably with any we possess in England, and
the eye can rest upon it again and again with renewed satisfaction and
delight. Its superb main arcade, with the boldly-designed and
finely-carved capitals representing the twelve months of the
year--unrivalled in this country; its handsome clerestory windows; its
great east window (the pride of the cathedral); and, overhead, its
richly-coloured roof, unique in shape, afford a combination not easily
to be surpassed.

The choir is about 134 feet long, 34 feet 6 inches wide between the
columns, and 72 feet 6 inches between the aisle walls.

The nave is not so wide by about 12 feet, and as the columns of both
nave and choir on the south side are on the same line, the extra width
is all on the north.

Looking westward, the view is marred by the tower arch not being in the
centre of the west wall, in consequence of which there is an ugly space
of blank wall between the arch and the north choir aisle.

There are eight bays, averaging about 18 feet in width. Those at the
end, however, east and west, are not so wide. At the east they probably
suffer from the intrusion of the east wall, which is about six feet
thick. The western bays may have lost the space taken for the choir
entrance. They have very acute arches, and at the west end rest on
responds or half-piers against the tower walls. Those at the east end
rest on brackets, and their mouldings lose themselves in the wall on
each side of the great