<g>The Nave</g>, to which we have slightly alluded, and on the spectator few things can be imagined more likely to make a strong and lasting impression. From whatever point it is contemplated, laterally or longitudinally, grandeur of design and elaborate execution are the leading characteristics. To enter into minute detail of its architectural beauties were impossible in our narrow compass. The general effect is all that we can presume to describe; and of this, assisted by the very correct view prefixed, the reader will have little difficulty in forming a just estimate of the magnificence that reigns in this venerable temple of our ancestors. There is one feature particularly deserving of notice, as a boundary line between two grand epochs in ecclesiastical architecture: this is, the point where the Saxon and Gothic meet in the same column. From the great western entrance, right and left, the massive clustered pillars have been evidently chiselled, at vast labour and expense, out of the original Saxon--thus engrafting the new style upon the primitive stock. The point where the Gothic ceases and the Saxon remains, and marking where the progressive work of transformation had been arrested by some public event, forms an admirable contrast, and shows the Gothic to infinite advantage. But the Saxon arches, still untouched by the reformer’s chisel, will be viewed by every lover of native art as precious relics of antiquity. “In Saxon strength that abbey frown’d, With massive arches, broad and round, That rose alternate, row and row, On ponderous columns, short and low.” Near the centre of the pavement is a remarkable echo, limited to one particular position, and quite inaudible as we diverge from the spot. The voice, or clapping of the hands, is reverberated with a noise like the discharge of cannon, or the roll of distant thunder; at first, loud and multiplied, and then dying gradually away in languid undulations.