As for the composition of the west front, it has been severely criticised, but two things must be borne in mind. The first is, that the towers were probably designed for spires. Add the spires, and as Notre Dame, Paris, the squatness of the façade disappears. Secondly, it was designed for the sculpture—a sort of open-air reredos—and not the sculpture for the façade. Nevertheless, it is not good, even as a reredos. The windows are mere slits in the wall, the doorways mere “holes for frogs and mice.” It lacks variety: the six big buttresses project, but have all the same amount of projection. The arcading below the west window is confused and muddled, and cut into anyhow by the central doorway. Nevertheless, its great breadth makes this façade of Wells more impressive than any other in the country, except that of Peterborough. What would it be with the spires added! [Illustration: LADY CHAPEL.] GEOMETRICAL PERIOD. _Undercroft, Staircase, Chapter house._—When the west front had been peopled with statuary, the undercroft of the chapter-house was built. A similar chapter-house, two stories high, once existed in precisely the same situation _i.e._—east of the north transept—at Beverley minster, the exquisite staircase to which still survives. Westminster chapter-house and that of Old St. Paul’s also had undercrofts. These undercrofts probably served as sacristies. The staircase or vestibule to the chapter-house, with simple tracery of cusped circles in its windows, is also of the early Geometrical period: its date is 1286-1320. The work here deserves the closest inspection; it is the best work in Wells cathedral, and unsurpassed by anything in Great Britain. The naturalistic foliage of the capitals and corbels is superb: especially notice the first corbels, representing a monk and a nun treading on serpents. The staircase leads by the chain bridge to the vicars’ close, as well as to the chapter-house. The chapter-house is one of the noblest in England. The long-lobed trefoils in the window tracery indicate that it is a work of the latter half of the Geometrical period (1280-1320); the profusion of ball-flower round and beneath the windows, and the ogee dripstones outside the windows, would seem to indicate that it was not completed till the very end of the period. Canon Church has ascertained that it was not finished before 1320. [Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.] [Illustration: NAVE.]