ing the mixture of forms to pervade the
whole composition, as if an intentional principle."

[Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST
(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).]

Whatever the motive, this daring mixture renders the study of the
architectural features of our cathedral peculiarly interesting. In the
triforium we find a semicircular outer arch circumscribing two inner
pointed ones. The clerestory arch is pointed, while some of the transverse
ribs of the great vault are pointed and some round.

The inward bend of the walls at the end of the choir was necessitated by
the fact that the towers of St. Anselm and St. Andrew had survived the
great fire of 1174. Naturally the pious builders did not wish to pull down
these relics of the former church, so that a certain amount of contraction
had to be effected in order that these towers should form part of the new
plan. This arrangement also fitted in with the determination to build a
chapel of the martyred St. Thomas at the end of the church, on the site of
the former Trinity Chapel. For the Trinity Chapel had been much narrower
than the new choir, but this contraction enabled the rebuilders to
preserve its dimensions.

#The Altar#, when the choir was at first completed by William, stood
entirely alone, and without a reredos; behind it the archbishop's chair
was originally placed, but this was afterwards transferred to the corona.
The remarkable height at which the altar was set up is due to the fact
that it is placed over the new crypt, which is a good deal higher than the
older, or western crypt. Before the Reformation the high altar was richly
embellished with all kinds of precious and sacred ornaments and vessels:
while beneath it, in a vault, were stored a priceless collection of gold
and silver vessels: such of these as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII.
were destroyed by the bigotry of the Puritan zealots: the latter made
havoc of the reredos which had been erected behind the high altar,
probably during the fourteenth century, and also a "most idolatrous costly
glory cloth," the gift of Archbishop Laud. The reredos was replaced by a
Corinthian screen, which was of elaborate design, but must have been
strangely out of keeping with its surroundings; it was removed about 1870,
to make way for the present reredos which was designed in the style of the
screen work in the Lady Chapel in the crypt, but which cannot be commended
as an object of beauty. The altar