through the arches of the presbytery, and
the windows over the range of tabernacle work in the choir itself. On
the left the south aisle can be seen stretching onwards, across the
bright break of the transept, to the west end, and on the right are
the gorgeous windows of the Lady Chapel. Everywhere the slender
pillars stand, and the mouldings branch away from their rich capitals,
each doing its appointed work, calculated and exact, in what would
seem at first but a lavish profusion of marble shaft and moulded
stone. Yet we can hardly now imagine what it all was like before the
richly-decked altars were torn down, the painted windows knocked to
fragments, the canopies, tombs, and images defaced or destroyed.

The vault is lierned with richly-carved bosses still warm with the
marks of gilding; both on the bosses and the capitals the foliage is
of the crumpled character suggestive of the oak-leaf.

Unlike the piers of the Lady Chapel, the bases here are of marble,
though the plinths are of stone. Two grotesque heads, lower than the
bosses, at the north and south-western angles, hold three ribs in
their mouths, the ribs, which end there in seeming futility, being
used to cover an awkward corner of the vaulting.

GLASS IN THE CHOIR AISLES AND CHAPELS.--A good deal of glass in a more
or less fragmentary condition survives in the eastern portion of the
church. It is fine work of the first half of the fourteenth century.
In the south aisles there is good glass in all the upper lights; the
third window has later glass in the lower lights, which bears the date
1607, and consists of coats of arms and a series of small square
pictures of foreign type. The east window of St. Catherine's chapel is
composed of fragments fitted together at random; in the upper lights
of the south window are rather coarse heads of St. Aldhelm, St.
Erkenwald, and other saints: two of them should be noticed for the
early form of papal tiara. In the corresponding chapel of St. Stephen
both the east and north windows are the same, the north window even
containing a second head of St. Erkenwald; the other saints are
inscribed--"St. Stephanas Papa" (the Pope Stephen, who died 257), "S.
Blasii Epi" (St. Blaise), and "S. Marcellus Papa"; in the topmost
light of both windows is a small figure of Our Lord.

In the north aisle, the first window (counting from the east) contains
a St. Michael; the next a crucifix and a figure of St. Mary Magdalen,
with some six