Externally, York Minster, from its vast dimensions and the fine composition of the towers, is exceedingly impressive. One realises its immensity best from the city walls, where it is seen “reflecting every change in the sky, and rising like a mountain above the parochial churches and houses of the city.” The treatment of the north side of the nave and transept is particularly grave and impressive—largely because of the absence of pinnacles. The west front, in spite of overloaded and confused ornament, is of its type the finest in the country; and to my mind the great west window, in the free and fanciful flow of its intersecting ogee arches, surpasses its only rival, the east window of Carlisle. The central tower relies for effect on mass more than height, and thus contrasts strongly with the central towers of Canterbury and Lincoln. Gloucester tower alone seems to be impressive equally from height and bulk. Shorn of its pinnacles, however, York central tower has not fair play. Very beautiful, too, is the play of light and shade in the double plane of tracery in the eastern clerestory. And very characteristic is the east façade; it may be all wrong, with its strong emphasis of horizontal lines and concealment of the gable, but it has distinction; one never confuses the east end of York with that of any other cathedral—one never forgets it. The weakest point in York is what ought to be the source of the greatest beauty, the window-tracery. Much of it, especially in the choir, is ugly in itself; even that of the great east window and of the windows in the transeptal bays is meagre and thin. But what is worse, this poor tracery is repeated with most wearisome iteration all over the flanks of the cathedral. Window after window of the nave, window after window of the choir, are monotonously alike. The imagination of the York people was singularly limited. What a contrast to the glorious series of windows of Exeter, contemporary with those of York nave! [Illustration: CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.]