All this is regrettable; but though Lincoln minster is shorter than it should be, its vast spaces, dimly lighted with scanty beams filtering through narrow lancets, are wonderfully impressive; the distances, yet further enhanced by the interposition of organ and screen, seem really infinite. It is not, like Ely, a study in contrasts, but in harmonies. The design of the nave leads without a break to that of the transepts; the design of the transepts to that of the choir; the design of the choir, aided by the rich stalls and screens, to the splendour of the presbytery, where the light breaks forth at length to irradiate the loveliness of moulding and foliage and sculptured imagery. Though the length of the nave was now curtailed in the altered design, some compensation was found in throwing out a flanking chapel on either side of the two westernmost bays. The position of these chapels may be founded on those of Ely; it was repeated by Wren in St. Paul’s. In all three cathedrals it gives a noble air of spaciousness on entering by the western doors. The vault of the northern chapel is supported, as if it were a chapter-house, by a beautiful central pier. This pier consists of eight shafts of Purbeck marble, very acutely pointed, once so highly polished, like the rest of the Purbeck shafts, says a mediæval versifier, that they positively dazzled the eyes. [Illustration: FROM NORTH-WEST.] Then came the west front. We may not like it; but given the conditions—the retention of an enormous oblong area of Norman wall with two Norman towers behind—it is not easy to see how anything better could have been done. Its vast height and breadth are astonishingly impressive from the little narrow courtyard which coops it in. To the same bishop, Grosstête, are to be attributed the beautiful Galilee porch, attached to the south transept as a state-entrance for the bishop from his palace over the way; the sacristy; and the chapter-house—the first polygonal chapter-house after that of Abbey Dore. “The strong flying-buttresses, like colossal arms stretched out to bear up the huge fabric,” were added later.