The exterior of the Cathedral Church of Manchester is by no means imposing. The traveller who reaches the city by the London and North-Western Railway and alights at the Exchange Station, will see fronting him what appears to be a large parish church with a western tower. Its walls are grimy with the smoke of the city, and although the building occupies a good site, open on every side save the east, with a large churchyard stretching out on the north and south sides of it, yet few of those who see it would stay their steps to walk round the building or enter it by the south porch, unless they had been previously told that this parish church, as it seemed to them, and as in a certain way it is, is also the Cathedral Church of Manchester, and that its interior is both impressive as a whole, and contains detail work of the highest interest. Our examination of the exterior may well begin with the most recent addition to the church--=the western porch=--only lately finished and still showing the colour of the stone fresh from the carver's hands. Whether this addition is an improvement to the general appearance of the building or not is open to question. To some, among them the writer, it appears that the porch takes away from the appearance of height in the tower, much as the Galilee Chapel at Durham, beautiful as it is in its details, is an excrescence detracting from the effect of the western front of St. Cuthbert's Cathedral Church. Moreover, the single crocketed turret that rises from the south-west corner of the porch proper gives it a one-sided appearance, which is somewhat to be regretted, as with this exception the porch and its lower flanking chambers is symmetrical, as indeed is the church itself in its main features, turret answering to turret, and window to window, porch to porch. The carving on the western porch is elaborate and carefully executed, and if, as must necessarily be the case owing to the conditions under which nineteenth century carving was executed, it lacks the freedom that is so great a charm in old work, it is more in accordance with the general style of the church, and is characteristic of its own date. This porch was designed by Mr. Basil Champneys, who has succeeded in training carvers to carry out his designs in an admirable manner. A verbal description of the porch is hardly needed, as the illustration on the opposite page will show the reader its character. On either side of the porch is a chamber rising to about the same height as the spring of the arch of the doorway; each of these is flat-roofed, its wall terminates in a pierced battlemented parapet, and is lighted by two rectangular-headed windows facing west. To the south and north of these two chambers respectively, are iron gates and flights of steps giving access to the churchyard. [Illustration: THE WEST PORCH.]