choirs of angels.

The yellow gritstone of the older work is contrasted curiously with the
white limestone of the Perpendicular nave, and at the junction the later
builders have left a jagged edge. Among very late Gothic buildings there
are few indeed which are of so good a quality as this nave of Ripon,
which, like the late church towers of Somerset, shows that mediaeval art
took long to die out in regions remote from London. It is, indeed, the
architecture of the days of Agincourt rather than of the eve of the
English Renaissance. The pillars are characteristic of the Perpendicular
style, their section being a square with a semi-circle projecting from
each side, and the corners hollowed. Their bases have complex plinths of
considerable height and are polygonal, but follow roughly the form of
the pillar, and the mouldings, as usual in this style, overhang the
plinth. The capitals, with small mouldings and many angles, are of
somewhat the same form as the bases. On the westernmost complete pillar
of the north arcade are two shields, charged respectively with the arms
of Ripon (a horn) and of Pigott of Clotherholme. The arches, instead of
being of that depressed form which is so common in late work, are very
beautifully proportioned, and their mouldings are bold, numerous and
well-cut. There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower
level than in Archbishop Roger's bays, runs below the great clearstorey
windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their
arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain. The roof-shafts, which
are in clusters of three and have fillets upon them, spring from
semi-octagonal corbels, and where each cluster passes the string-course
there is an angel holding a shield. A sign of decadence may be found,
perhaps, in the way in which the hood-moulds of the windows intersect
with these shafts. Though the two sides of the nave are not quite of the
same date, they are almost alike, but for some slight differences in the
capitals, the arch-mouldings, and the hollows on the pillars; the
builders feeling doubtless that any marked variation would mar the
general perspective--a consideration which, of course, could not bind
them in designing the north aisle. The original Perpendicular roof may
have resembled that which now covers the transepts. About 1829 Blore put
up an almost flat ceiling of deal. The present oaken vault, by Sir
Gilbert Scott, was copied from that of the tran