In the middle of the choir is a much-dilapidated monument of a
cross-legged knight (a crusader, of course) in armor, very rudely
executed; and, against the wall, lie two or three more bruised and
battered warriors, with square helmets on their heads and visors down.
Nothing can be uglier than these figures; the sculpture of those days
seems to have been far behind the architecture. And yet they knew how to
put a grotesque expression into the faces of their images, and we saw
some fantastic shapes and heads at the lower points of arches which would
do to copy into Punch. In the chancel, just at the point below where the
high altar stands, was the burial-place of the old Barons of Kendal. The
broken crusader, perhaps, represents one of them; and some of their
stalwart bones might be found by digging down. Against the wall of the
choir, near the vacant space where the altar was, are some stone seats
with canopies richly carved in stone, all quite perfectly preserved,
where the priests used to sit at intervals, during the celebration of
mass. Conceive all these shattered walls, with here and there an arched
door, or the great arched vacancy of a window; these broken stones and
monuments scattered about; these rows of pillars up and down the nave;
these arches, through which a giant might have stepped, and not needed to
bow his head, unless in reverence to the sanctity of the place,--conceive
it all, with such verdure and embroidery of flowers as the gentle, kindly
moisture of the English climate procreates on all old things, making them
more beautiful than new,--conceive it with the grass for sole pavement of
the long and spacious aisle, and the sky above for the only roof.
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