The plan of the church is remarkably complete, symmetrical, and well-proportioned. Nave, transepts, choir, each flanked with its aisles, combine to form with the Lady Chapel and chapter-house a cathedral church which, though not of the first magnitude, is the most complete and typical in England. The ground plan itself, as set out in all technical severity on page 160, possesses an unusual attraction for the eye. It is free both from mutilation and excrescences; and yet all the picturesque external grouping, and internal mystery, which the afterthoughts of Gothic architects so often lend to a building, are secured, in the case of Wells, by the carefully-placed chapter-house and the beautiful arrangement of the Lady Chapel. The transepts of the choir are very happily carried far enough east to be internally subordinate to this chapel, which arrangement, with the apsidal form of the chapel itself, adds much to the beautiful proportions of the church. A third transept is given to the west end of the nave by the two towers. The length of Wells Cathedral from east to west is 383 feet within the walls, and 415 without. The length of the nave is 161 feet, its breadth 82 feet, and its height 67 feet. The length of the choir is 117 feet, and its height 73 feet. The transepts are 135 feet within and 150 feet without. THE NAVE.--The general effect of the nave is that of length rather than height, and this is mainly due to the continuous arcade of the triforium which leads the eye from end to end of the building instead of from floor to roof. If this be compared with the older work in the transepts, it will be seen at once by how simple a device this radical change in the effect has been produced. Instead of being carried down right across the triforium, as in the transepts, the triple vaulting shafts are cut off above the arcade so as to be little more than corbels, and the space thus gained is used to give one additional opening to each bay of the triforium. In the transepts the triforium is composed of pairs of lancet arches separated by vaulting shafts, the triforium of each bay being a distinct composition over its pier arch; but by the time the architect had come to the nave, a new idea had occurred to him, and he made the triforium in one continuous arcade, unbroken from east to west, evidently with the deliberate intention of producing a horizontal rather than a vertical effect. The arrangement has undoubtedly a character of its own, and "there is no nave in which the eye is so irresistibly carried eastward as in that of Wells."