y or Beverley the eye is led on from west to east by the
circling band of the rich triforium; in the naves of Winchester and
Canterbury it is attracted from floor to roof by the upspringing
clusters of shafts; at York it wanders from point to point without any
prominent feature to catch it. The blank space in each bay between the
windows of the clerestory and the vaulting shafts ought to be a welcome
contrast to the curves of tracery, the clusters of pillars and mouldings
in a strong and forcible design. At York it appears to be simply a piece
of wall which requires decoration.

Everywhere there is a lack of emphasis, not only in structure but in
detail. The windows are not recessed, the capitals are small, the
mouldings are delicate rather than forcible. The main piers are thin,
their shafts are rather monotonously and tamely divided, the mouldings
of the arches are narrow and shallow, the mullions of the clerestory and
the shafts on each side of them are unusually slender; and this is
peculiarly unfortunate in a nave, the width of which is greater both
actually and proportionately, than that of any other English Gothic
cathedral. To make a successful design of such proportions, there was
need of strong vertical lines to give it the appearance of unusual
strength: and not only the appearance but the reality. It is a
significant fact that the builders were afraid to place a stone vault on
their nave, and thus it is a Gothic building without that feature which
gives its whole significance to the Gothic style, and by reason of which
the design of this nave came to be what it was. It is a curious paradox,
that the builders of York should have abandoned one of the most
attractive features of earlier art in pursuit of a more logical design,
and should then have been forced to abandon that very vault which gave
their design all its logic. It is as if a dramatist strictly
subordinated all his characters before the central figure of the hero,
and then discovered that the exigencies of the plot would not allow of
the introduction of the hero at all.

The most casual observer, on first entering the nave of York Minster,
must have a vague feeling of disappointment, a consciousness that
something is wanting; he will see that his feeling is justified, when he
learns that it is the first building in England of which the design is
entirely dominated by the necessities of a stone vault, and yet that it
is crowned by a wooden roof. But