ntrance of the pilgrims into the cathedral, points out how different a
scene must have met their eyes. "The external aspect of the cathedral
itself," he says, "with the exception of the numerous statues which then
filled its now vacant niches, must have been much what it is now. Not so
its interior. Bright colours on the roof, on the windows, on the
monuments; hangings suspended from the rods which may still be seen
running from pillar to pillar; chapels, and altars, and chantries
intercepting the view, where now all is clear, must have rendered it so
different, that at first we should hardly recognize it to be the same
building." The pilgrims on entering were met by a monk, who sprinkled
their heads with holy water from a "sprengel," and, owing to the crowd of
devout visitors, they generally had to wait some time before they could
proceed towards a view of the shrine. Chaucer relates that the "pardoner,
and the miller, and other lewd sots," whiled away the time with staring at
the painted windows which then adorned the nave, and wondering what they
were supposed to represent:

"'He beareth a ball-staff,' quoth the one, 'and also a rake's end;'
'Thou failest,' quoth the miller, 'thou hast not well thy mind;
It is a spear, if thou canst see, with a prick set before,
To push adown his enemy, and through the shoulder bore.'"

[Illustration: CAPITALS OF COLUMNS IN THE EASTERN APSE.]

None of these windows now remain entire, though the west window has been
put together out of fragments of the ancient glass. The latter-day
pilgrims will do well to look as little as possible at the hideous glass
which the Philistinism of modern piety has inserted, during the last
half-century, in the windows of the clerestory and the nave. Its obtrusive
unpleasantness make one wish that "Blue Dick" and his Puritan troopers
might once more be let loose, under judicious direction, for half an hour
on the cathedral. When Erasmus visited Canterbury, the nave contained
nothing but some books chained to the pillars, among them the "Gospel of
Nicodemus"--printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509--and the "tomb of some
person unknown." The last words must refer either to the chapel in the
south wall, which was built by Lady Joan Brenchley in 1447, and removed in
1787, or to the monument of Archbishop William Wittlesey, who died in
1374, and was interred in the south side of the nave in a marble tomb with
a brass, now destroyed. At present th