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The following quotation is typical of the leading essay writers on this subject: "The Equilateral Triangle enters largely into, if it does not entirely control, all mediæval proportions, particularly in the ground plans. With slight deviation, most, if not all, the ground plans of the French Cathedrals are measurable in this manner, and their choirs may be so measured almost without exception.
The greatest and finest of them is as perfect in its details and as elaborate in its ornamentations as the cathedrals at Milan or Toledo, except that it has been cut out of a single piece of stone instead of being built up of many small pieces. The architect made his plans with the most prodigal detail and executed them with the greatest perfection.
But he would not land anywhere on the Welsh coast. There was nothing to see in Wales but castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals of York and Salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had more than once thought of a walking tour through England. Better still if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the French coast.
People go to the post office all the same, be it a barn or a parthenon, but they will go, other things being equal, to the best hotel. Here comes in the American principle of Competition, the keynote of all our enterprise. Competition is to do for us what the hope of earthly immortality did for the builders of the Pyramids, what the desire to glorify God did for the builders of the cathedrals.
The Commissioners of King William's time had suggested that the chanting of divine service in cathedrals should be laid aside; and even Archbishop Sharp, although in many respects a High Churchman, told Thoresby that he did not much approve of singing the prayers, 'but it having been the custom of all cathedrals since the Reformation, it is not to be altered without a law. Exaggerated dread of Popery suspected latent evils, it scarcely knew what, lurking in this kind of worship.
It needs to be mellowed and ripened, like some pictures; although I suppose this awfulness of antiquity was supplied, in the minds of the generation that built cathedrals, by the sanctity which they attributed to them.
He had the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, masses and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was above all things self-consistent and incorruptible.
Above two centuries before this arrangement, however, as the diocese of Dublin contained two cathedrals St.
"Ecclesiologist," xxi., p. 26. "Handbook," 20th ed., App. Few persons would dispute the statement that for external grandeur of effect the cathedral at Ely is surpassed only, if at all, in England by Durham and Lincoln. With the natural advantages of position enjoyed by those cathedrals Ely cannot compete.
"Tom," said Fred earnestly, "I've been trying to fancy myself in another world, and I have almost succeeded. When I look long and intensely at the ice, I get almost to believe that these are streets, and palaces, and cathedrals.
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