s
mode of painting is described as being executed upon a thin coating of
composition, made of whiting and white of egg, laid on the oaken panel;
upon this the outline of the design was traced with a red line, and the
spaces designed to receive gilding were then marked out with fresh
whitening and egg; the stems marked with a modelling tool, and leaves
added by filling moulds with the paste, and fixing them by pressure on
the surface of the picture; the puncture work and little toolings were
then produced, and the modelling finished. The gilded portions were next
covered with gold leaf, and the artist proceeded with his pictures, using
transparent colours liquefied by white of egg.

At the extreme end of the Cathedral once stood another chapel, dedicated
to St. Mary the Great, of considerable note in early times--the offerings
at the high altar amounting to immense sums--daily mass was said here for
the founder's soul in particular, his friends, relations, benefactors,
&c. The chapel was about seventy feet long and thirty broad, and had a
handsome entrance from the church; it has long since disappeared. The
Jesus chapel on the opposite side is rather a melancholy looking place at
present, one high tomb of some pretensions in the centre alone
distinguishing it from a lumber room; near this chapel, in the north
aisle, is the speculatory before alluded to, as the opening through which
the sepulchre was watched at Easter; it has, until recently, been called
the ancient "confessional," a somewhat extraordinary position for such a
priestly office to be exercised in, as were it so, the penitent must of
necessity have stood in the aisle on tiptoe to reach the ear of his
confessor in the choir, who must equally of necessity have lain upon the
ground to receive the confession.

And now we must pass on to the cloisters, where one almost involuntarily
cries out for "the monks of old," to come and give life to the walks
among the tombs, no other earthly figure or garb, save a cowled monk,
seeming to have place in such a scene. The long lines of beautiful
windows, on the one side of pure early English tracery, on another of the
decorated period, and another line still more elaborate in its turnings
and twistings, while the last bespeaks the perpendicularism that prevails
among so many of the windows of the church--each and all are beautiful.
The splendidly carved doorway entering into the church, that has puzzled
learned and simp