But my pre-imaginations and my
memories are both apt to play me false with all admirable things, and so
create disappointments for me, while perhaps the thing itself is really
far better than I imagine or remember it. We engaged an old man, one of
the attendants pertaining to the cathedral, to be our guide, and he
showed us first the stone screen in front of the choir, with its
sculptured kings of England; and then the tombs in the north transept,--
one of a modern archbishop, and one of an ancient one, behind which the
insane person who set fire to the church a few years ago hid himself at
nightfall. Then our guide unlocked a side door, and led us into the
chapter-house,--an octagonal hall, with a vaulted roof, a tessellated
floor, and seven arched windows of old painted glass, the richest that I
ever saw or imagined, each looking like an inestimable treasury of
precious stories, with a gleam and glow even in the sullen light of this
gray morning. What would they be with the sun shining through them!
With all their brilliancy, moreover, they were as soft as rose-leaves.
I never saw any piece of human architecture so beautiful as this
chapter-house; at least, I thought so while I was looking at it, and
think so still; and it owed its beauty in very great measure to the
painted windows: I remember looking at these windows from the outside
yesterday, and seeing nothing but an opaque old crust of conglomerated
panes of glass; but now that gloomy mystery was radiantly solved.
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