he word beautiful so often that I feel
half inclined to apologise for it; but I cannot help it, though it is
often quite inadequate to express the loveliness of some of the figures
carved here; and so it happens surely with the face of this angel. The
face is not of a man, I should think; it is rather like a very fair
woman's face; but fairer than any woman's face I ever saw or thought of:
it is in profile and easy to be seen in the photograph, though somewhat
in the shade. I am utterly at a loss how to describe it, or to give any
idea of the exquisite lines of the cheek and the rippled hair sweeping
back from it, just faintly touched by the light from the south-east. I
cannot say more about it. So I have gone through the carvings in the
lower part of this doorway, and those of the tympanum. Now, besides
these, all the arching-over of the door is filled with figures under
canopies, about which I can say little, partly from want of adequate
photographs, partly from ignorance of their import.

But the first of the cavettos wherein these figures are, is at any rate
filled with figures of angels, some swinging censers, some bearing
crowns, and other things which I cannot distinguish. Most of the niches
in the next cavetto seem to hold subjects; but the square camera of the
photographer clips some, many others are in shadow, in fact the niches
throw heavy shadows over the faces of nearly all; and without the
photograph I remember nothing but much fretted grey stone above the line
of the capitals of the doorway shafts; grey stone with something carved
in it, and the swallows flying in and out of it. Yet now there are three
niches I can say something about at all events. A stately figure with a
king's crown on his head, and hair falling in three waves over his
shoulders, a very kingly face looking straight onward; a great jewelled
collar falling heavily to his elbows: his right hand holding a heavy
sceptre formed of many budding flowers, and his left just touching in
front the folds of his raiment that falls heavily, very heavily to the
ground over his feet. Saul, King of Israel.--A bending figure with
covered head, pouring, with his right hand, oil on the head of a youth,
not a child plainly, but dwarfed to a young child's stature before the
bending of the solemn figure with the covered head. Samuel anointing
David.--A king again, with face hidden in deep shade, holding a naked
sword in his right hand, and a living i