ge of hill
to the north. Most of those who visit St. Albans for the first time feel
a sense of disappointment. The church has no far-projecting buttresses
to give light and shade, no flying buttresses or pinnacles like those
that lend such a charm to most French and many English churches. All is
severely plain, partly on account of the very early time at which the
greater part of the existing church was built, partly on account of the
material used for its walls. Abbot Paul of Caen, who designed it,
trusted entirely to mass and proportion for the effect he wished to
produce. But we do not see it as he designed it, and possibly built it.
When we remember that he came from Caen, and seems to have used St.
Stephen's Church, at that time recently built by Duke William, as a
model, though he planned his own church on a grander scale, he must have
contemplated two western towers even if he did not erect them--though,
as previously stated, there is a division of opinion on the part of
authorities on this subject. These western towers, if they were built,
as well as the central one, would be crowned by pyramidal caps; and such
towers, finely proportioned, would give the church the height which it
so much needs, and the lack of which we feel so acutely to-day. The
raising of the roofs at the time of the restoration to their original
pitch was an undoubted gain, for without it the building looked lower
and longer even than it does now. The church as we see it has been sadly
injured by Lord Grimthorpe's work at both ends of the transepts, and
whatever may be said about the western front in itself, yet no one can
deny that, had the church been flanked by two towers standing, as at
Wells and Rouen, outside the line of the aisles, even though the front
itself were as plain as that of St. Stephen's at Caen, it would have
been far more impressive.

There is another point in which the church as it exists differs from the
church as it might have been seen soon after Abbot Paul had built it.
Then its walls were covered without as well as within with plaster,
within richly decorated with colour, and without whitewashed. How
different it must have looked with its vast mass seen from a distance
rising above the wooded slopes, white as a solid block of Carara marble
gleaming in the sun, and the lead-covered roofs of nave, transept,
choir, and towers shining with a silvery lustre. Many modern restoring
architects strongly object to plaster, an