Side by side with the octagon went up the choir, as was necessary, that the octagon might have abutment to the east. The choir is “a little over-developed and attenuated in detail”; the windows are squat and ungraceful in proportion, and their flowing tracery wiry and unlovely. Window tracery is the one weak point in the Curvilinear work at Ely. Nevertheless, this choir is one of those works whose delicate loveliness disarms criticism. It even disarmed Mr. Fergusson, who says that the proportions of the presbytery are reproduced in the choir, “with such exquisite taste that there is perhaps no single portion of any Gothic building in the world which can vie with it in poetry of design or beauty of detail.” [Illustration: ALCOCK’S CHAPEL.] But the monks had not finished even now. They were dissatisfied with the lighting of the older part of the cathedral. So they took out the thirteenth-century lancets, not only those of the aisles but those of the outer wall of the triforium of the presbytery, and replaced them by broad windows of flowing tracery. Even this was insufficient, and so they substituted a flat roof for the steep sloping roof of the two western bays of the presbytery aisles, and glazed the openings of these two bays of the triforium. Thus more light was obtained for St. Ethelreda’s shrine, which then stood between these two bays; its exact position is marked by the elaborate boss in the vault of the choir. Externally, the result is hideous, a big hole being left in the choir aisles, where the lean-to roof formerly extended continuously. All this piercing of the walls with bigger windows weakened the supports of the vaults, and the builders therefore took the precaution to weight the buttresses with heavy pinnacles, and to add flying-buttresses. Beautiful stalls were then put up under the octagon—the panels are modern—and above the ancient white marble tomb of St. Ethelreda a stone canopy and watching-loft were erected. It now stands between the south piers of the presbytery, in the fourth bay from the west. On this was placed the Norman silver reliquary, “embossed with many figures, with a golden majesty blazing in its centre, with countless jewels of crystal and pearl, onyx and beryl, and amethyst and chalcedony.” Nor was this all. Alan designed for his friend Prior Crauden a little chapel which would be the cynosure of any other cathedral, but which passes almost unnoticed amid the glories of Ely. VI. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—In this period the monks continued their improvements in the lighting of the cathedral, treating the Norman nave very much as they had treated the Lancet choir—_i.e._, putting bigger windows in the aisles, and also raising the aisle-walls so as to get space for an upper range of windows, in the hope that some light might filter through across the triforium into the nave.