care never to look due east or west. The western view is still
further injured by the treatment of the west window--in itself an
admirable piece of tracery--which fits into nothing, and seems cut through
the wall at an arbitrary point. But the nave elevation, taken bay by bay,
is admirable. Looking across out of the aisle--the true way to judge--the
real height at last comes out, and we are reminded of some of the most
stately minsters of France....

DURHAM [Footnote: From "English Note Books." By arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's works, Houghton, Mifflin Co.
Copyright, 1870 and 1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Durham Cathedral has one advantage over the others I have seen, there
being no organ-screen, nor any sort of partition between the choir and
nave; so that we saw its entire length, nearly 500 feet, in one vista. The
pillars of the nave are immensely thick, but hardly of proportionate
height, and they support the round Norman arch; nor is there, as far as I
remember, a single pointed arch in the cathedral. The effect is to give
the edifice an air of heavy grandeur. It seems to have been built before
the best style of church architecture had established itself; so that it
weighs upon the soul, instead of helping it to aspire. First, there are
these round arches, supported by gigantic columns; then, immediately
above, another row of round arches, behind which is the usual gallery that
runs, as it were, in the thickness of the wall, around the nave of the
cathedral; then, above all, another row of round arches, enclosing the
windows of the clerestory.

The great pillars are ornamented in various ways--some with a great spiral
groove running from bottom to top; others with two spirals, ascending in
different directions, so as to cross over one another; some are fluted or
channeled straight up and down; some are wrought with chevrons, like those
on the sleeve of a police inspector. There are zigzag cuttings and
carvings, which I do not know how to name scientifically, round the arches
of the doors and windows; but nothing that seems to have flowered out
spontaneously, as natural incidents of a grand and beautiful design. In
the nave, between the columns of the side aisles, I saw one or two
monuments....

I left my seat, and after strolling up and down the aisle a few times
sallied forth into the churchyard. On the cathedral door there is a
curious old knocker, in the form