On the two following centuries I need not dwell. I will rather hasten on to our own times. The last great changes in the church of Wells come within our own memory. Those changes say a great deal for the zeal and energy of those who carried them out, but they say very little for their taste and knowledge. The pity is that they were done at the particular time when they were done, when it was quite possible to get detail well executed--and the detail certainly is very well executed--but when ecclesiastical arrangement was not understood. It would have been far better to have let the church remain in its old state, wretched as that state was, for twenty or thirty years longer. As it was, the change was made in one sense so badly as to make the whole thing a by-word, in another sense so well that I fear there is little chance of undoing it for a good while to come. Some things were done which were deeds of sheer havoc, deeds worthy of no one but of Protector Somerset himself. What had those Bishops done whose figures may be seen in the undercroft of the Chapter-house, that they should be torn away from their places and shut up as it were in a posthumous dungeon? What had our famous Beckington done that his canopy should be carried away, and set up where, as covering nothing, it is simply ridiculous and unmeaning? To be sure even that was not the lowest depth in store for the great benefactor. His canopy had yet to be mutilated and moved backwards and forwards in order the better to display the most hideous stoves with which human perversity ever disfigured an ancient building.[53] When we think of the havoc of last year, one is half inclined to forgive the havoc of twenty years back. Yet one cannot help asking why the long continuous ranges of stalls which give such dignity to the choirs of Winchester, Ely, and Manchester, were forsaken for the absurd arrangement which sticks the stalls piecemeal between the pillars, and which so lessens their numbers that, if the whole Chapter were ever to assemble, some less lucky Canons must sit on the laps of others?[54] Why was all this done? I know the answer well. It was to provide room for the congregation; it was thought a great feat to give a little more width to the choir, and so to gain a few more sittings, by putting the stalls between the pillars instead of in their proper place in front of them. Now to provide for the congregation is an excellent object, but the wisdom of our forefathers had already found ample room for the congregation in quite another way. Did those who planned the last arrangements of Wells Cathedral know that there was a nave, and, if they did know it, for what end did they suppose that that nave was built? A Bishop, coming in by the cloister door, might possibly never find out that there was a nave at all; but a Dean, coming in at the west end, must have seen that there was a good deal of building between that door and his own stall, and