Their ornamentation is remarkable, partly Saxon and partly Oriental in character, and said to be unlike Norman work. Sir Gilbert Scott himself noticed the latter characteristic of these and other capitals in the church. "The foliated ornament," he wrote, "assumes a noble character, evidently evincing a study of the ancient Greek, which was effected through a Byzantine medium." We have already seen, in the History of the Cathedral, how this Byzantine influence is to be accounted for by the fact that Greek clergy flocked to the court of Ethelred's brother-in-law Richard; and further, it must be noted that many illuminated MSS. of Saxon date show that Greek ornament was admired and studied at the time. Professor Westwood, in his "_Lapidarium_," points out that in Saxon art the designs of stone-carving are so completely identical with those in the MSS. as to lead us to suppose that the artists of the illuminated drawings were also the designers of the architecture. So much is this the case that, "the age of a particular MS. being ascertained, we are able approximately to determine also the age of the carving." Professor Westwood was, in fact, among the first to be convinced of the Saxon origin of the capitals we are discussing. It is worth while to give a few illustrations of this very important point. The first capital from the tower on the north side of the choir is ornamented with that curious _spuma_ or wave-shaped work which has just the dip and swing of a wave of the sea as it curls over before breaking. In a Psalter of the beginning of the eleventh century (B.M. Har. 2904) is to be found precisely the same vivid conventionalism.[2] The second capital is the most curious one in the church, and is also the most strikingly Saxon, the stalks issuing from pipes or tubes being as characteristic almost of Saxon as interlaced work is of Celtic art. Standing immediately under this capital, one is able clearly to discern the faces on the corner volutes, which have each a crown of leaves like one found in the famous tenth century "Dunstan" MS. in the British Museum. One of these faces is that of a man, very heavy and stupid-looking; the other that of a comely woman. It is hardly fanciful to suppose that they are portraits of the blundering Ethelred and his wife Emma. The third capital is decorated with some branching work hardly less curious, and above it is a head wearing the unbifurcated mitre, which dropped out of use in the eleventh century. Of the three capitals on the south side of the choir, which do not bear the same signs of weathering, one has branching work, and the other two reworked leafage, such as is found also in one on the north side of the nave. As for the triforium and the rest of the work of the choir, it was all so much restored in the twelfth century that one cannot find in it any sign of pre-Norman work.