great weight.

A disagreeable impression is also caused by the row of hip-knobs along
the coping of the central gable, and the pinnacle in their midst. This
collection of curiosities was probably added in the seventeenth
century, and the pinnacle may have been taken from one of the denuded
buttresses of the Lady Chapel to replace the gable cross which must
have originally stood here: at all events it is a later addition, as
was proved by an examination of the masonry. It would be an act of
justice to the memory of Jocelin if these trivial excrescences were
removed.

Perhaps one is even more distressed on first seeing the front by a
third fault--the weak and stringy effect of the long, thin, dark,
marble shafts. For this the restorer, Mr Benjamin Ferrey, must bear
the blame. He complained with justice that the original blue lias
shafts, when they were decayed, had been replaced by the ordinary
Doulting stone.[4] But, unhappily, he did not go back to the original
material, but fitted the whole front with a complete set of shafts of
Kilkenny marble, which is at once dark and cold. They absolutely
refuse to blend with the old, warm, grey stone, and stand out, stark
and stiff, like an array of gigantic slate pencils. Mr Ferrey was
possessed with the idea that the blue lias shafts (having only lasted
for a paltry half-dozen centuries) were not durable enough for the
work. He therefore used this marble, which, doubtless, will stand in
increased obtrusiveness when every stone of the cathedral has decayed.
He further was impressed with the strange notion that the hideous
Kilkenny marble is of the same colour as the exquisitely delicate grey
of the blue lias. The result is a sad warning to all restorers not to
be more clever than the original architect.

Let us, then, try to imagine the west front with its empty lowest tier
filled with graceful figures, its gable in its first simplicity and
surmounted by a cross, its towers of Early English form crowned with
lofty spires, its delicate shafts of their original material, and its
ranges of figures "all gorgeous in their freshly-painted hues of blue
and scarlet and purple and gold." Then we shall have some idea of the
front of Wells as Jocelin meant it to be and to remain.

[Illustration: Ornaments In The West Front.]

As for the colour, its effect can be gathered from the traces which
survive. There is ultramarine, gold, and scarlet in the tympanum of
the central doorway, wher