If we return to the nave, we shall find that it is not only in general effect it is so very worthy of admiration; it still retains much of its old furniture, and in spite of a few modern mosaics, and one or two more modern altars, is less altered in its general effect since the fourteenth century than any great church that I have ever seen. The screen between the nave and choir with the ambons on either side of it first deserve notice. The screen is mainly a work of A. D. 1394.[30] It consists of a series of columns carrying a flat lintel or cornice on the top of which is a row of extremely good statues of the apostles. They have that grand sweep of the figure which one knows so well in early fourteenth century work in France, and are free from the somewhat heavy and clumsy treatment which marks so much of the work of the Pisani. The screen has been raised on the base of the older Byzantine screen, which consisted of a simple continuous arcade now nearly hidden by the more modern steps to the choir. The ambons are probably of the same age as this older screen; the gospel ambon being of two stages in height, with a good staircase to it from the choir aisle, that for the epistle being comparatively low and simple, but still large enough to contain two or three modern pulpits. The screens to the choir aisles are of the same sort as the main screen, but are placed one bay to the east of it. They are all three interesting as showing that a Gothic architect could use with good effect a common Classic arrangement, and indeed lend fresh grace to it by the detail of the sculpture and inlaying with which he adorned it. Dimly seen from the nave through the Rood-screen, but far more interesting than even it, is the great baldacchin or canopy over the altar in the choir. Here we have the simplest form--four columns carrying round arches and the wall above them finished with a plain horizontal capping. The arches may be modern; though if they are so, they are copied from the old, as is evidenced by the painting at the back of the Pala d’Oro, which shows the placing of the shrine of S. Mark under a similar baldacchin; but the groining is old, and the alabaster columns are of extreme interest, being covered all over with most elaborate sculptures of Scripture subjects. The subjects in the north-east column give the history of Joachim and Anna, and the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the north-west has the nativity of Our Lord, the marriage in Cana, &c.; the south-west subjects from the Passion; and the south-east the miracles of Our Lord. Few modes of decorating an altar are altogether so fitting and beautiful as this, and I hope the day is not far distant when we shall see many of our English altars standing under canopies of the same sort. St. Paul’s cathedral may well prepare the way for us in this, by reviving what was usually accepted as the best kind of reredos by our English church-builders in the eighteenth century.