mity of the exterior of the chapel the eye
seems to take in all there is to see in one sweeping vision, refusing
subconsciously to look individually at each of the twelve identical
bays, each with its vast window of regularly repeated design. But
there are some things it would be a pity to pass over, for to do so
would be to fail to appreciate the profound skill of the mediaeval
architects and craftsmen who could rear a marvellous stone roof upon
walls so largely composed of glass. In this building, like its only
two rivals in the world--St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle and
Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster--the wall space between the windows
has shrunk to the absolute minimum; in fact, nothing is left beyond
the bare width required for the buttresses, and to build those
reinforcements with sufficient strength to take the thrust of a
vaulted stone roof must have required consummate capacity and skill.
At Eton, where, however, the stone roof was never built, the
buttresses planned to carry it appear so enormous that the building
seems to be all buttress, but here such an impression could never for
a moment be gained, for the chapel filling each bay completely masks
the widest portion of the adjoining buttresses. The upper portions are
so admirably proportioned that they taper up to a comparatively slight
finial with the most perfect gradations.

Directly we enter the chapel our eyes are raised to look at the roof
which necessitated that stately row of buttresses, but for a time it
is hard to think of anything but the splendour of colour and detail in
this vast aisleless nave, and we think of what Henry's college might
have been had the whole plan been carried out in keeping with this
perfect work. Wordsworth's familiar lines present themselves as more
fitting than prose to describe this consummation of the pain and
struggle of generations of workers since the dawn of Gothic on English
soil:

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the architect who planned--
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only--this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, whe