Just before me stands an old oak settle, perhaps nearly coeval with the transept. How many generations of monks have sat on it and warmed their withered hands over a pan of charcoal! I could almost imagine that on certain days their ghosts may perambulate their old haunts, and seat themselves here again. In the centre of the transept lies Bishop Wilberforce. On the east side is Prior Silkstede’s Chapel, as it is called. It is now a vestry, and here Isaak Walton is literally trodden under foot. In answer to my inquiries, the verger pulled up the matting and showed his slab inscribed with Bishop Ken’s[77] verses. They are not worthy of the author of the morning and evening hymns. They inform us that he lived-- “Full ninety years and past But now he hath begun That which will ne’er be done. Crowned with eternal Blisse We wish our souls with his.” Isaak was an erect, hale old man to the last. He was a theologian, and we hear that to atone for long neglect, a statue to him is about to be placed on the screen, beside the saintly Fishermen. “I wish that Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, had been buried here,” said Mr. Hertford, “and that we had an epitaph on him by Milton. The elegiacs he wrote on his death were as beautiful as ‘Lycidas.’” And now all are ready, and we advance along the aisle behind the choir, and come in sight of the “presbytery screen,” some arches surmounted by coffers, which look like small locomotives on a railway viaduct. All this was the work of Fox, who was bishop in the reigns of the Henrys (VII. and VIII.). He built the clerestory and vaulting of this part. We look up at the roof and remark the bosses exhibiting the Tudor arms and other heraldic emblems dear to Fox; while beyond, in the vaulting of Bishop Lucy, the devices are more scriptural, including not only the instruments of the Passion, but the faces of Pilate and his better half, and Peter’s sword with Malchus’ ear upon it. The bones of the Saxon kings and bishops buried in the Cathedral, had been well dried and preserved, having been placed in stone coffins pierced with holes. Fox piously collected them into these chests, on which he inscribed the venerated names of their owners.[78] He hoisted them up, having great confidence in the safety gained by elevation, and his trust was justified, with regard to his window in the gable and his statue above it, but in respect of these chests, he did not rightly measure the height to which mob violence might attain. After the storm had passed away, the bones were collected and replaced, but no one knew what remains were stored in any particular chest. A small set of bones has been thought to have belonged to Queen Emma. There are twelve names, and as late as 1845, the confused contents were all safe; but by 1873, one of the twelve skulls was gone. “Purloined, perchance, by some over-zealous phrenologist, whose principles were not more sound than his theories,” said Mr. Hertford.