The choir and extremities of the transept, all of pointed architecture, are supposed to have been rebuilt in 1278.--The Lady-Chapel was an addition of the year 1326.--The abbey suffered materially during the wars between England and France, in the reigns of our Henry IVth and Henry Vth: its situation exposed it to be repeatedly pillaged by the contending parties; and, were it not that the massy Norman architecture sufficiently indicates the true date, and that we know our neighbors' habit of applying large words to small matters, we might even infer that it was then destroyed as effectually as it had been by Ironside: the expression, "lamentabilitèr desolata, diffracta et annihilata," could scarcely convey any meaning short of utter ruin, except to the ears of one who had been told that a religious edifice was actually _abimé_ during the revolution, though he saw it at the same moment standing before him, and apparently uninjured.--The arched roof of the choir received a complete repair in 1535: that of the nave, which was also in a very bad state, underwent the same process in 1688; at the same time, the slender columns that support the cornice were replaced with new ones, and the symbols of the Evangelists were inserted in the upper part of the walls. These reparations are managed with a singular perception of propriety; and though the manner of the sculpture in the symbolic figures, is not that of a Gothic artist, yet they are most appropriate, and harmonize admirably with the building. [Illustration: Symbols of the Evangelists] You must excuse me that, now I am upon this subject, I venture to "travel somewhat out of the record," for the sake of proposing to you a difficulty which has long puzzled me:--the connection which Catholic divines find between St. Luke's Bull and the word Zecharias;--for it appears, by the following distich from the Rhenish Testament, that some such cause leads them to regard this symbol as peculiarly appropriate to the third Evangelist:-- "Effigies vituli, Luca, tibi convenit; extat Zacariæ in scriptis mentio prima tuis."-- [Illustration: Figures of effigies]