Stable, therefore, below and above, the exterior of Salisbury has much of that “monumental appearance”—of what Dr. Johnson called “stability and indeterminate duration”—which is the noble attribute of a great architecture, which one desiderates in a building “built not for time, but for eternity, whose walls will long be washed by the passing waves of humanity.” Such a building gravity and simplicity befit; its design should be solid and monumental, sober and restrained; it is not a field for the frippery of ornament, its best decoration is the stain of time. Built for eternity, it should suggest infinity—an infinite length which the eye cannot measure, an infinite height which the eye cannot estimate, a vastness of area that overpowers the imagination. Bigness counts for much in the painter’s work and the sculptor’s; it counts for yet more in architecture. A building in the grand style has to be big, and if it is a Gothic building it has to look bigger still. Salisbury is really big: it is 473 feet long, its spire is 404 feet high, its vaulted roof, 81 feet high, is the highest of any English cathedral. But the eye does not measure in feet. Salisbury spire and Louth spire, acute and slender, look hundreds of feet above their real height; Oxford and Chichester spires look lower than they really are. As for length, follow the wall of Salisbury from east to west. As you pass round cape and headland and promontory, you forget the point from which you started, or the goal for which you are bound. How foreshortened in comparison is the long façade of a Pitti Palace! As for area, in all honesty Mr. Whittington gravely declared that Salisbury was “a much larger church altogether than Amiens.” The error was natural. Amiens has fewer parts than Salisbury, and necessarily seems less. Going round Salisbury we pass no less than seven façades, at Amiens only three. There are thirty-nine bays in Amiens; in Salisbury there are sixty. As usual, multiplicity of parts has produced apparent increase of magnitude.