The connoisseur may here find an abundant field to exercise his architectural knowledge, in deciding the various dates of the several portions of this beautiful part of the building. The long row of stalls, with their high-backed and projecting canopies, crowned with multitudes of crocketted pinnacles, the richly decorated screen-work, that shuts out the plainer Norman aisles, the mysterious-looking triforium running round the curious apsidal termination, the light clerestory, with its tier of windows, divided by feathered and canopied niches, whence spring the main ribs of the vaulted roof,—form a whole, that it needs no skill in art or science to be enabled to appreciate and enjoy. Of painted glass, perhaps the less said the better—we may be wanting in taste or judgment; certain it is, it forms no very prominent feature of beauty, and a kaliedoscope of mediocre arrangement, and a rather indifferent illumination transparency, may, we fancy, each find a counterpart among the specimens of colour that do exist. Something is in progress—perhaps on an improved scale. But we must not omit to glance at a few of the quaint old carvings, that remain almost as sole relics of the ancient furniture of the church. Entering any stall, we observe the seat turns up on hinges, and beneath is a narrow ledge, which it has been presumed was a contrivance to relieve the old monks from the fatigue of standing, during the parts of the service where that position is prescribed by the rubric; they were supposed to lean upon these ledges in a half-sitting posture; but a much more reasonable conjecture is, that they were intended as rests for the elbows and missal when kneeling in prayer; a glance at them when turned up instantly suggests the idea of a _prie dieu_, which they closely resemble. The lower parts of these _misereres_, as they were called, are decorated in a most elaborate manner with carving, and supported by bosses, sometimes of one or more figures, often foliage, fruit, and flowers, or shields. Among them may be found the figures of a lion and dragon biting each other; owls and little birds fighting; Sampson in armour (?) slaying the lion; monkeys fighting, one holding a rod, another in a wheelbarrow; the prodigal son feeding swine; a monk tearing a dog’s hind legs; another flogging a little boy, amid a group of other urchins; and numerous other equally inexplicable designs. If, indeed, such objects did occupy the place under the eyes of the monks at their devotions, they must have served admirably to train the risible muscles to self-command.