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The interior of the edifice is composed of a nave and two aisles, at the upper extremity of the nave rises an arched dome, which is surmounted on the outside by an obelisk supporting a globe. Several costly pictures decorate the chapels. Those which are perceived at the extremities of the two aisles are more particularly esteemed. They are by Vincent, a distinguished painter of the french school.
But as he walked on now, the leafy shadows seemed to grow into arched and pillared aisles rising far, far above him, and the stars were but the countless tapers on a mighty altar reaching to heights he could not see; and Aunt Winnie, was kneeling on the steps, old Aunt Winnie, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes.
The central tower is supported by magnificent clustered piers of dark and swarthy masonry, and the views of these from the transepts or from the aisles of the nave make some of the finest pictures that are to be obtained in this masterpiece of Gothic architecture. The tower that rises from the north transept belongs, it is believed, to the twelfth century church that was burnt.
As to the house within, two rows of pillars went down it endlong, fashioned of the mightiest trees that might be found, and each one fairly wrought with base and chapiter, and wreaths and knots, and fighting men and dragons; so that it was like a church of later days that has a nave and aisles: windows there were above the aisles, and a passage underneath the said windows in their roofs.
The remains in the crypt show that there were two eastern apses to these transepts close to the central tower, and Professor Willis deduces from the position of these apses that they left no room for eastern aisles. There is no instance in existence of a transept having western without eastern aisles. One may therefore conclude that aisles were entirely wanting.
The walls on either side of the aisles are broken by various chapels. These lie in deep shadow. The roof, formed of open rafters, bearing marks of having once been elaborately gilded, is now but a mass of blackened timbers. The floor is of brick, save where oft-recurring sepulchral slabs are cut into the surface.
They turn and pass proudly down between the aisles of wondering festal faces. Ah! the circle is drawing closer. One more quick whirl to keep them back, O flying skirt and dainty-winged feet! Too late! The music stops. The tawdry walls shut in again, the vulgar crowds return, they stand pale and quiet, the centre of a ring of breathless admiring, frightened, or forbidding faces.
In a little while I stood amid the ruins of the great cathedral; its mighty pillars, chipped and scarred, yet rose high in air, but its long aisles were choked with rubble and fallen masonry, while through the gaping rents of its lofty roof the rain fell, wetting the shattered heap of particoloured marble that had been the high altar once.
At first I may be a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images and statues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different from the stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave and aisles. Then everything is sanctified and inviolate.
As soon as they got to the next island they saw the Pine wood a solid green bank not half a mile away, and the boys gave a little cheer, and felt, no doubt, as Mungo Park did when first he sighted the Niger. In fifteen minutes they were walking in its dry and delightful aisles. "Now we've won," said Yan, "whatever the others do, and all that remains is to get back."
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