The winding stairway within the wall leads us to the western end of the Chapel of St. John, which is, with the possible exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham, the finest Norman chapel in England. It has a beautiful arcading, with heavy circular pillars, square capitals and bases, and a wide triforium over the aisles. Here is a perfect Norman church in miniature. The south aisle at one time communicated with the royal palace, and the gallery with the State apartments of the keep. It is only within recent years that the sanctity of the place has been again observed, and now visitors behave here as in any other consecrated building; but it was for many years used as a sort of store chamber, and the authorities at one time proposed turning it into a military tailors’ workshop! That was in the mid-nineteenth century, when England in general had fallen into a state of artistic _zopf_ and the daughters of music were brought low. So low, too, had the guardians of the nation fallen in their ideas that this beautiful building meant nothing more to them than a place, a commodious place, of four stone walls, that was lying idle and might be “put to some practical use”! The Prince Consort made timely intervention and the desecration was not persisted in. It was in this chapel that the rabble in Richard II.’s time found Archbishop Sudbury at prayer; at prayer, too, in this chapel, knelt Brackenbury when the messenger from King Richard III. brought demands for the Princes’ murder; here Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry VII., lay in state after death; here Queen Mary, after the death of her brother, Edward VI., attended Mass and gave thanks for the suppression of revolt; and here the vacillating Northumberland, father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey, declared himself a Roman Catholic lest he should lose his life, but without the effect he desired. In this solemn place, too, those who aspired to knighthood watched their arms at the altar, passing the night in vigil before the day when the king would elect them to the order. This was the place of worship of our Norman and Plantagenet kings. Could any other building in the country claim like associations? Yet these things slip the mind of a generation, and then is the hallowed ground made desolate. The large rooms entered from the chapel are the former State apartments, now given over to the housing of a collection of weapons and armour which is described on the show-cases, and therefore need not be detailed here. In these rooms Baliol in the reign of Edward I., and King David of Scotland in that of Edward III., were kept prisoners, but not in the strictest sense. Other notable captives here were King John of France (after the battle of Poitiers), Prince (afterwards King) James of Scotland, and Charles, Duke of Orleans--all of whom have been spoken of in the previous chapter. Several models of the Tower buildings, made at various periods, will be found in these rooms. The larger--western--apartment,