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It was nearly dark, but the great windows smouldered with deep fiery stains, and showed here and there a pale face, or the outline of a mysterious form, or an intricacy of twined tabernacle-work.
Beautiful, however, as is the body of the chapel, it is not comparable to the choir. Here, and on either side, are ranged the stalls of the knights, formerly twenty-six in number, but now increased to thirty-two, elaborately carved in black oak, and covered by canopies of the richest tabernacle-work, supported by slender pillars.
The upper story of the recess itself has open tabernacle-work, now containing a series of figures representing the crowning of the Virgin; on one side are figures of King Ethelbert and St. John the Baptist, and on the other St. Thomas
The façade, with its squat towers, exhibits no lofty aim, but when one looks at the tabernacle-work in the tympan of the divided portal, the capitals in the jambs and the mouldings of the archivolts, the elegant arcade above and the tracery of the great rose window, one feels that although the Pointed style could not yet embody its dream of beauty by means of the tower and spire, it was moving towards it through a maze of glorious ideas destined to become inseparable from the spirit of the perfect whole.
Next to King's College Chapel, I suppose, it is the noblest series of windows in England, and the colour of it is incomparable. Azure and crimson, green and orange, yet all with a firm economy of effect, the robes of the saints set and imbedded in a fine intricacy of white tabernacle-work. As to the design, I hardly knew whether to smile or weep.
They are surmounted by lofty canopies of elaborate tabernacle-work supported on slender shafts and rising into a forest of crocketed spirelets and pinnacles. There are ribbed vaults under the canopies, and upon the pendants in front are hovering angels.
Mention must be made of the fine stone screens and tabernacle-work on either side of the altar, the altar slab of Purbeck marble, the triforium of intersecting arches in the choir, and the roof pendants. The western portion of the church was built during the mastership of Peter de Sancto Mario, and his fine canopied tomb is a striking object on the north side of the nave.
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