VI. The next work was the completion of the first five eastern bays of the nave. Whoever the architect was, or the architects—for there may have been two of them, the arcading of the aisles and the height of the bases differing widely on the north and south sides of the nave—it was not Geoffrey de Noyers, but some one who was both a good artist and a good engineer—so good an engineer that in the interior he sacrificed art to engineering. The piers he set as far apart as possible, and made them as thin as possible; but they are beautifully built, and rest on foundations which are continuous underground from pier to pier. These obtuse arches, however, and attenuated piers are most unsatisfactory to the eye. The nave is practically an improved version of the choir—improved in the vaulting, the buttresses and pinnacles, and in height. To the vault he added intermediate ribs—an early example of their use. The northern exterior of the nave, with its knife-edge buttresses and tall gablets and strong base-courses, is one of the best designs in all Gothic; it is of almost Greek severity. The height of the nave he raised from 74 to 82 feet. A Frenchman would have given a nave so broad (42 feet) a height of 120 feet. However, he was thinking—as all the Lincoln architects were always thinking—of how it would look outside, how it would affect the sky-line of the cathedral to have a nave far higher than the choir. Never was an English cathedral built so much for external effect as Lincoln; in every part of it the exterior is finer than the interior. [Illustration: SOUTH TRANSEPT.]