orwich Cathedral. The second,
however, of these buildings, retains the original groinings of the roof,
which in our English church have been sacrificed, to make room for large
pointed windows; while in the church of the Trinity they have given
place to a spacious dome, painted with a representation of the
Assumption. In the foreground of this picture, is seen the royal
foundress of the abbey; and, according to common tradition, the portrait
of a female dressed in the habit of a nun, on the north side of the high
altar, is also intended for her. But traditions of this nature are too
vague for much reliance to be placed upon them. The altar-piece itself
is an _Adoration of the Shepherds_, not devoid of merit.--The plain
arches, with their truncated columns, seen in the upper part of _plate
26_, near the front on either side, and repeated in the following plate,
are those which terminate the flat part of the choir. The wide unvaried
extent of blank surface beneath them is attributable to modern masons,
who have filled up and covered arches without mercy or discretion, and
have pierced the walls anew with plain mean door-ways. The windows are
lofty, and of fine proportions. Their glazing is probably of the time of
Louis XIV. when the gorgeous splendor of painted glass gave way
to the less beautiful and less appropriate ornaments, supplied by the
fancy of the plumbers.[61] The narrow passage formed in the thickness of
the wall, with its small arches variously decorated, surrounds the whole
building; choir, nave, and transepts. In the architectural arrangement
of this portion of the edifice, where every large arch of the windows is
flanked by two lesser ones of the triforium, the church of the Trinity
agrees with the cathedral at Oxford, as figured in Mr. Carter's work on
ancient architecture[62] and there treated as a genuine Saxon building,
erected by King Ethelred, after the destruction of the monastery by the
Danes in 1004. But the capitals of the columns in the two churches bear
only a slight resemblance to each other. Those at Oxford[63] are among
the most beautiful left us by early architects, consisting chiefly of
foliage; and, in one instance, of a very elegant imitation of a coronet.
In the abbatial church at Caen, they display the same mixture of Grecian
and barbarous taste, the same beauties, the same monstrosities, and the
same apparent aim at fabulous or emblematic history, as has been
previously remarked at St. G