At Ely one feature of beauty is lamentably absent, namely stained glass contemporary with the building. In the Cathedrals of York and Lincoln much ancient glass survives, while remnants exist in many village churches; but at Ely, once no less richly be-jewelled, nearly all has been swept away. There is no record of its destruction, which may have taken place under the unsparing hand of Bishop Goodrich, or a century later, it may be, during the Civil Wars. We are the losers, and we can hardly feel that our loss is made good by the coloured glass with which during the last hundred years many of the windows have been refilled, though here and there fine modern glass sheds its glow on the grey stonework around. Yet as we walk round this glorious Minster, surveying it whether from within or from without, the feeling uppermost in our minds is rather one of thankfulness that so much has been spared than of indignation that so much has been destroyed. We can understand what the poet-philosopher Coleridge meant when he spoke of Gothic architecture as "Infinity made imaginable"; and we may enter into the feelings of the peasant woman who, in simpler language, expressed the same idea, when after her visit to Ely Minster she remarked, "That Cathedral is like a little Heaven below; everybody should see it, both rich and poor." We have now come to the end of the story of the building of Ely Minster; her Bishops and Deans have since then had enough to do in keeping her stonework in repair without adding to it; and this work of restoration has been carried on from century to century with real, if sometimes misguided, devotion. Originators have had their day; the repairer is now in possession. Great as were the architectural achievements of the seventy monks of Ely, we must not suppose that all their time went in superintending such work. We do not know, indeed, whether they did much of it with their own hands at all. We have, it is true, seen John of Wisbech, the builder of the glorious Lady Chapel, himself digging out the foundations with his mates; but on the other hand we are told how skilled artisans from a distance were hired to undertake the more delicate work in completing the lantern. That the Brethren spent much time in writing we have abundant proof. Our own familiar word _ink_ is a standing testimony to their industry in this respect, being derived from _inc._, the abbreviation universally used in the Abbey account books for _incaustum_, the Latin word for their writing fluid. In the reign of William Rufus, that monarch's Commissioners came to Ely, and carried off 300 volumes from the Abbey library, besides all the Service books; and we need hardly doubt that most of these books, if not all, had been copied on the spot. One beautifully written Breviary from Ely is still to be seen in the University Library at Cambridge. It is of the fourteenth century.