To deal adequately with Winchester Cathedral would be almost to write the history of England, a task manifestly impossible within the limits of such a work as this. For the Cathedral is not merely a building, but a veritable history in stone, and that not a history--as historic buildings very often are--of a community which has raised but a small eddy in the waters of national life, but of one which has profoundly affected the fortunes of the nation during almost every period of its existence. It is safe to say that scarcely a single storm of national strife has burst upon the land without leaving in some way an impress upon these grey stone walls, and during a period of many centuries there was scarcely one single actor of eminence in the national drama who did not leave, in some form or other, a record imperishably graven here behind him. Not only have these stones witnessed the coronations of kings--the baptisms, marriages, and burials of princes--the consecration of bishops, and many another ceremony of high national significance, but they enshrine within their circuit the sacred dust of generations of the great departed, subject and king, soldier and priest, statesman and prelate; they are a great national Valhalla with which no other in the land save Westminster Abbey can claim to compare. As the preceding pages have shown, a Christian cathedral has existed continuously on the present site since the days of Kynegils and Kenwalh, in the 7th century. Bishop Swithun and Bishop Æthelwold successively added to or rebuilt large portions of the fabric, but the only Saxon work now remaining is in the crypt and foundations. The pillars and arches are splendidly massive and curiously fashioned, and show that Æthelwold’s work was solidly constructed. The Cathedral, as we see it to-day, is the Norman and Angevin Cathedral--the cathedral of Walkelyn and of Godfrey de Lucy, transformed in later Plantagenet days by Edyngton, Wykeham, and Beaufort, and adorned by Silkstede, Fox, and many others. Walkelyn’s Cathedral was a typical Norman building, and the disposition of its parts reflected a symbolism as well as a harmony. The central truths of Christian doctrine, those of the Trinity and of the redemption, were beautifully symbolised in the three-fold repetition of nave, triforium, and clerestory in the elevation, and of nave, choir, and transepts disposed in the form of a cross in the ground plan. The arches and pillars are characteristic examples of the Norman style--semicircular arches springing from heavy, cushion-shaped capitals surmounting the strong circular pillars. The general effect of the interior, though heavy, was one of impressiveness and dignity, as can be well seen from the transepts, which remain for all practical purposes unaltered from their original form, or better still from the interior of Chichester Cathedral of to-day. It reflected alike calmness, dignity, and strength--the dignity of a strength conscious of a burden indeed, but