the prosaic task of trying to find out to what circumstances its beauty is due, and why the name of Richard Poore is honoured among lovers of good architecture with that of Christopher Wren, no other Englishman being worthy to make a third. The chief points to be noted about Salisbury are these. The effect does not in any way depend upon ornamental details. This may be proved by two examples taken from the building. The west front was greatly injured at different times, its carving broken, and its figures defaced. The carving has been copied and “restored,” and new figures have replaced the old. The front is now neat and spick and span, but the general effect is in no wise improved, but rather deteriorated, by having its antiquity destroyed. It is the same with the chromatic decoration of the interior, and with the “improvement” of the Chapter-house. The painting on the roof tends to lower it; the gaudy, shiny aspect of the Chapter-house goes far to spoil, if it could spoil, the exquisite design and subtle proportions. [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND.] Another point to be noticed is this: Salisbury does not owe its beauty to size, nor yet altogether to the style in which it is built. This is easily proved. The great French cathedral of Amiens exceeds Salisbury in all its dimensions, and was built, allowing for the difference between France and England, in the self-same style. Both are examples of First Pointed, and Amiens is, according to Fergusson, at least twice as large in its cubic contents. “The French church covers 71,000 square feet, the English only 55,000. The vault of the first is one hundred and fifty-two feet in height, the latter only eighty-five.” There is still a more remarkable difference between the central spires of the two churches. That of Amiens rises to a height of 422 feet; that of Salisbury, the tallest in England, only to 404. Yet the great height of the roof at Amiens robs its spire of any preponderance it might otherwise boast, and leaves the comparatively small steeple of Salisbury a feature of grandeur and beauty only approached by the still lower dome of St. Paul’s, which rises at its highest part, the cross, to 365 feet above the ground level.