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A short distance within, the cave widens and the floor of the extension being somewhat higher, is dry, but the roof drops so low over it that the water-course is an easier route of travel; and this soon widens into a lake above which the ceiling rises in a broad dome less than twenty feet in height, and hung with heavy masses of dripstone draperies of varying length, from five to seven feet; and all the ceilings are fringed at various heights with stalactites of every size and age, some being a clear, colorless onyx, while others proclaim their great age in the fact that they have so deteriorated that the onyx texture is either partly or completely lost, and what was once a pure drip crystal has returned to a common, porous, dull-colored limestone so soft that portions can be rubbed to powder in the hand.
But as this very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture, which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the aperture.
This condition is seen in the arch from St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above. § VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined, and victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone; while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced to disappear altogether.
The buttresses rise to the parapets without diminishing in breadth or projection an early feature, and three large rolls or beads are worked upon their edge. Those that flank the portal have each a large niche at the bottom, with engaged shafts, and the head and dripstone trefoiled. At the corners of the façade, where the staircases are, the buttresses are triple.
A memory of the Palace survives in 'Hall Yard, and there still remains what is, perhaps, a remnant of the actual fabric, in the shape of an old cottage with an external staircase, which stands behind the wall to the west of the public garden that fronts the north side of the church. In the above-mentioned wall is an Early English doorway, with a dripstone adorned with the nailhead moulding.
The nave end, the main central portion of the front, contains the great west door, to be described later, and over it the great window, inserted during the second half of the fifteenth century. The dripstone of the window terminates in two carved heads.
There is a similar staircase on the south side, but the turret does not rise quite so high above the roof. There are five square-headed two-light windows on either side of St Michael's Loft, the lights being divided by transoms, the upper parts foliated. At the east end is a three-light window without any transom, with an obtuse arch under a dripstone.
Wolf's Den is also near Galena, and has been utilized as a sheep fold. Wild Man's Cave is near Galena, and on account of the stories with which people have been frightened, can only be visited by permission and with a guard stationed at the entrance. Reynard's Cave is four miles west of Galena on the farm of Dr. Fox, but is so nearly filled up with dripstone that only crawling room remains.
The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is, indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of effect, like the "black touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye.
In ancient times it was natural to the old builders if they had, say, a barn to build, to make it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttress it with stone, to bestow care and thought upon coign and window-ledge and dripstone, to prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and to cover it with honest stone tiles, each one of which had an individuality of its own.
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