But an interior may easily be made too massive; if it is not to be a Salisbury cathedral, it need not be a Newgate Gaol. How was the prison-like appearance of an interior but 68 feet high, with a stone vault of exceptionally heavy appearance weighing it down, to be avoided? How was oppressive heaviness to be counteracted? Triumphantly, by transparency. By stretching out the windows from buttress to buttress, aisle and clerestory became practically one continuous sheet of glass; the church was flooded with light and atmosphere; the heavy vault seemed to float in the air, borne up but by the lilies and roses and wheels of the window tracery, and rows of painted saints in tabernacles of silver or of gold. There is no heaviness even now in the interior of Exeter; though the silvery panes of the choir, the golden glass of the nave, have perished long ago. Another distinctive feature in Exeter, as in Salisbury, is that the architect produces his effect mainly by architectural means—is not driven to rely on sculpture. All the principal capitals have mouldings, not foliage. Only in the great corbels of the vaulting-shafts and in the bosses of the vault, does he permit himself foliage and sculpture. Wonderful carving it is; the finest work of the best period, when the naturalistic treatment of foliage was fresh and young. Very remarkable these corbels are, with their lifelike treatment of vine and grape, oak and acorn, hazel leaf and nut. Unfortunately the corbels, and still more the bosses, are so high up that their lovely detail is thrown away; and they are out of scale. And the patterns of the window tracery are wonderfully diverse. It is not, as in Lichfield nave or King’s College Chapel, where every window is like its neighbour; when you have seen one, you have seen all. Here, all down each side of the church, every window differs. In dimensions, in general character, they agree; in details they differ; each window is a fresh delight; we have what even in Gothic architecture we rarely get—diversity within similarity.