One might fancy that a vast structure erected of such materials might have a very picturesque appearance, and that the rich and deep red of the brick, alternating with an equal quantity of coarse mortar in the joints, and interspersed with rough flint work, might give to the general colouring of the edifice a warmth of tone, and a richness of texture which, on a general view, might more than make up for its ascetic plainness. But, oh! tell it not in our Belgravian Gath; neither publish it in the streets of our Tyburnian Ascalon! These Norman builders, like too many of their descendants in our own day, had no such artistic notions, but rejoiced in encrusting the whole,--within and without,--with one uniform coating of the smoothest and whitest plaster! St. Alban’s, when viewed from the ruins of Old Verulam, must have looked like a sort of “Moel Wynn,”--_a white mountain_; or, like the creation of a spell of Merlin,--hewn out of a single block of marble (Fig. 252)! Our romantic old Mediævals were not proof against such fascinations, for we find [Illustration: Fig. 251.--Plan, St. Alban’s.] St. Wilfrid glorying in having washed the York Minster of his day “whiter than snow;” and at Peterborough, it was the boast of one of the abbots, that he had so skilfully whitewashed his cathedral, that it appeared as if cut out of a single stone! But let us take comfort. Abbot Paul had not sunk to so low a depth! He had an eye to the sister arts; and we find him recorded as having enriched with painting the vaulting of the apse behind the high altar. Nor did he stand alone in his taste for such decorations; for we find now that every part of the plain old plastered walls, pillars, arches, and vaulting has been so enriched at different periods, the western side of the great piers of the nave being richly painted with figures and subjects as the reredoses of the altars placed against them. [Illustration: Fig. 252.--St. Alban’s Abbey at the close of the 11th century.] With such artistic relief as this, added to the stern and massive grandeur of its parts and the stupendous scale of the whole, and adding also the gorgeousness of the shrine of the Proto-martyr, and of the numerous altars and other objects which imparted beauty and solemnity, one may well imagine that the internal effect, notwithstanding the absence of architectural detail, was as noble as it must have been unique. The roofs, internally, may be proved to have been masked by level ceilings, no doubt gorgeously painted like that which still remains over the contemporary church at Hildesheim in North Germany, or that but recently executed by Mr. Burges, aided by the charming art of Mr. Poynter, over the nave of Waltham Abbey. The present painted ceilings are, no doubt, the lineal successors of the Norman ones.