#The Main Crypt.#--Returning through the passage under the steps that lead up to the choir, we turn to the right into the crypt which originally supported Conrad's "glorious choir." On the wall as we enter we may notice some diaper-work ornamentation, interesting from the fact that a similar decoration may be traced on the wall of the chapter house at Rochester for Ernulf who built the westward crypt, was afterwards made Bishop of Rochester. Willis tells us that there are five crypts in England under the eastern parts of cathedrals, namely, at Canterbury, Winchester, Gloucester, Rochester, and Worcester, and that they were all founded before 1085. "After this they were discontinued except as a continuation of former ones, as in Canterbury and Rochester." This crypt of Ernulf's replaced the earlier one set up by Lanfranc; Willis thinks it not impossible that the whole of the pier-shafts may have been taken from the earlier crypt. "The capitals of the columns are either plain blocks or sculptured with Norman enrichments. Some of them, however, are in an unfinished state." He describes minutely one of the capitals on the south-west side. "Of the four sides of the block two are quite plain. One has the ornament roughed out, or "bosted" as the workmen call it, that is, the pattern has been traced upon the block, and the spaces between the figures roughly sunk down with square edges preparatory to the completion. On the fourth side, the pattern is quite finished. This proves that the carving was executed after the stones were set in their places, and probably the whole of these capitals would eventually have been so ornamented had not the fire and its results brought in a new school of carving in the rich foliated capitals, which caused this merely superficial method of decoration to be neglected and abandoned. In the same way some of the shafts are roughly fluted in various fashions. The plain ones would probably have all gradually had the same ornament given to them, had not the same reasons interfered." The crypt then stands as it was left by Ernulf except that some of the piers were afterwards strengthened and one new pillar was inserted in the aisle by William of Sens, in order to fit in with the new arrangement of the pillars in the choir which he was then rebuilding. It is therefore, of course, the oldest part of the church, and remains a most beautiful and interesting relic of Norman work in spite of the hot water pipe apparatus which now disfigures it, and its general air of unkempt untidiness. There are signs, however, that in this respect there is likely to be some improvement. The floor is being lowered to its original level by the removal of about a foot of accumulated dirt which had been heaping itself up for the last eight hundred years and had at last entirely smothered the bases of the columns, and it is even whispered that the part now cut off and used as the French